


a place to go

by delia-pavorum (literaryminded)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AND THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And Finding Each Other, Big Penis is Big, Cabin Fic, Cabin Setting, Christmas, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Holiday Season, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Making the Tags All The Puns I Wanted the Title to Be, If You Can Call 4 Days a Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Past Issues, Rey and Ben Looking for Solitude, Sharing a Bed, Sick Character, Size Difference, Size Kink, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing, Smut, Snowed Inn, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Winterlude
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-09-18 08:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16991454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum
Summary: All Rey Johnson wanted was solitude. A place to go where she could escape from the daily stressors and mayhem of her job. A place where she could enjoy some peace and some quiet. Her mentor Luke Skywalker's small cabin up north seemed like the ideal place to do just that. A week of seclusion was just what she needed.And then Ben Solo arrived.





	1. the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all. Thanks for showing some interest in this little project of mine. Up till now, I've been _very_ comfortable in the realm of one-shots (plus the occasional two-shot or, perhaps, three-shot as I like to think of [Moral Ambiguity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14265999/chapters/32903298)) and I've decided to try my hand at a multi-chap for the holiday season.
> 
> Thanks so much to my friend [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives) for her generous and helpful read-through of this chapter and for knowing exactly what I needed as my title. Oh, and her endless knowledge of cabin-life in Northern Ontario. And also to [slipgoingunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder) for always being a fantastic beta, sounding board, and outlet for all my bad puns.

* * *

_There is a town in North Ontario_  
_Dream, comfort, memory to spare_  
_And in my mind I still need a place to go  
_ _All my changes were there._

– Neil Young, “Helpless”

* * *

With a gust of wind and a flurry of snow, Rey Johnson burst into the cabin.

Quickly shutting the door behind her, she did a full body shiver complete with the noise one makes when they’re trying to exorcise the damp and cold from their very soul. She stomped her feet, depositing packed white snow into the entryway, and dumped her grocery bags and duffel onto the floor. With a deep and hearty sigh, she took a second to look around.

She’d made it.

Rey could only count a handful of times where she had considered herself “lucky” and this was one of them. She had arrived probably just ahead of what was looking like it was going to be a horrific snowstorm. Her 1984 Honda Civic had barely made it up the last pass. The further north she had gone, the denser the flurries had gotten until it was almost a complete white-out in the end. She had shitty Dunlops from six years ago as winter tires – not the smartest decision for Canada, even if southwestern Ontario wasn’t exactly peak Arctic – and a car that was always one rattling cough away from certain death.

Yet, despite the odds, she was there.

It was almost exactly as Luke had described it: outside, a long driveway, currently snow-covered, leading up to the tiny cabin with a small wraparound porch. Inside, one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a sitting area. Everything had an air to it that was simultaneously shabby and clean. A little worn, definitely not updated, but well-taken care of.

Luke had mentioned that he tried to make it a point to come up a few times a year, usually in rotation with his sister, though she lived a bit further away and didn’t make it up as often. It was a quiet place for him, he’d told her, a place for solitude and reflection – “and maybe a few tokes of the good stuff,” he’d added, with a wink – and he didn’t go up as often as he liked to.

Still, he’d been up recently enough, it appeared. There was a neat, fresh-looking pile of firewood stacked in a log holder by the hearth. A few magazines had been left on the coffee table and she recognized the actors on the front covers – which was saying something, based on Luke’s usual standards for entertainment – promoting recent-enough movies. She zeroed in on a cozy blanket draped along the back of the faded and patched-up old couch.

 _You and I will be getting_ well _-acquainted_ , she thought, pleased.

Yes, solitude and a bit of silence. Peace was what she could use, too.  

Luke had known that. He had seen her beginning to get burnt out – the love of her job still there, visible and clear and simmering at the surface, but deeper down, close to her soul, a weariness that was threatening to settle.

Weariness from dealing with adolescents who tried their best, despite the obstacles life had bestowed on them, and continued to get knocked down at every turn.

Weariness from parents who had kids with potential – or kids who needed more help than she alone could give – and who couldn’t even return a fucking phone call.

Weariness from kids who had already lost faith in a flawed system – the ones who opposed her, contradicted her, who antagonized her and mocked her faith in them, who got in her face and sometimes worse.

Her patience was there, as was her care. Constant. In ways that nothing else in their life was. But cracks had begun to show, just a bit.

A reset was exactly what she needed.

There was a faded mat at the front door with a small boot tray beside it. She gave her boots another quick scrub on the mat, before toeing them off and kicking them towards the tray.  She picked up the bags she had hastily dropped on entry and prayed nothing had broken. Grimacing as her socked feet stepped into the puddles they had left on the mat, she made her way towards the kitchen.

The cabin, though very...cozy (a euphemism for “tiny” that she was extremely familiar with from apartment-hunting in the city), boasted large windows along the wall adjacent to the fireplace, which gave the illusion of infinite space, letting in an abundance of natural light and affording her a lovely view of the falling snow and rolling hills and snow-capped evergreens as far as the eye could see.

She glanced back towards the fireplace as she settled her bags on the counters. Luke had mentioned something about the best way to start a fire, but at the time it had seemed so abstract to her that she hadn’t exactly processed what he was saying. Oh, well. She would figure it out.

She spent the next twenty minutes puttering about the small dwelling, putting away her groceries. Her holiday getaway haul included toast, peanut butter and jam, a Costco-sized twelve pack of mac n’ cheese (it was cheaper when you bought it in bulk and it wasn’t like it went bad quickly,  _geez_ ), three bottles of wine, a bag of Ketchup chips — in other words, the essentials.

As she worked, her breath puffed out in noticeable vaporous clouds. It was damn cold, inside and out. She hadn’t even taken her coat off yet, she realized belatedly. As if on cue, she let out an enormous sneeze, accompanied by a telltale tickle at the back of her throat.

She inwardly groaned. It would be _so_ like her to get sick for the entire time she was away.

Deciding that getting warm was top priority, she haphazardly finished shoving things into the available cupboards, making a cursory note of the canned soups and various canned vegetables that already occupied the spaces. The perishable goods had already gone into the fridge, though there had been a brief moment of abject terror where she’d thought the fridge wasn’t working and all her Kraft Singles were going to go bad. Luckily, she realized quickly that it had simply been unplugged from its outlet.

Luke had mentioned the electrical was spotty at times, especially in inclement weather, as the cabin was on the cusp of the catchment area for the local power utility company, but the refrigerator had let out a pleasant hum once she plugged it in, so she’d refused to worry about it. Once she had taken care of everything inside, including plugging in the space heater in the bedroom (though there was electricity, the only heat sources were the fireplace and the old space heater that looked like it had been around about as long as her car) she went back outside to turn on the natural gas – another one of Luke’s instructions and a key component to all the orange macaroni she planned on consuming.

Finally, she re-entered, took off her coat and boots for a final time, and sighed again. She was so ready for this. And if the thought of being alone, again, the same way she always was, and over the holidays to boot, niggled in the back of her mind a bit – just a nudge, slightly less than persistent, but enough to make her take heed, even if only for a moment – well, she brushed it aside quickly enough and picked up her duffel to take to the room.

* * *

An hour or so later, the sun had waned in the late afternoon sky, the dimming orange light coming in through the windows as Rey lay sprawled on the couch with her newest appropriation – the cozy blanket she had spotted upon arrival – wrapped around her. She took a sip of wine and then turned the page of her dog-eared copy of _Persuasion_.

She had brought about ten different books, mostly classics she had always meant to get caught up on – spending a week alone in a secluded cabin seemed as good a time as any to get through _Anna_ _Karenina_ – but also some newer novels that had made recent bestsellers lists or were the “must-reads” of celebrity talk show hosts. Yet, as was always the case, she ended up going back to the tried and true stories that she’d read a thousand times before.

There was something comforting about an old book: the familiarity of the story, the discovery of a new analysis or turn of phrase even on the hundredth re-read (although any “discoveries”, admittedly, came fewer and further between the more she read it), the heft of it in the palms of her hands, the smell of the crackling and yellowing pages. Some of her books had been around with her, for her, longer than any human being ever had. The books were her family. Her friends. Her one constant.

 _Look at you_ , she thought, on the caustic edge of self-deprecating. _Alone with your thoughts for less than two hours and already you’ve become maudlin._ She threw back the rest of the wine in her glass and then made a conscious, concerted effort to not pour herself another one as she determinedly turned back to the page she was reading.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself. The fire she had built was abysmal at best – clearly she hadn’t recalled Luke’s instructions at all, abstractly or otherwise. The embers glowed around the logs and there was a faint crackling that implied _something_ was burning, but from what she could see – and feel – it certainly wasn’t enough to heat even the small space of the cabin.

With a sigh, she got up and picked the poker up from its holder, absently wiping her nose with her sleeve. It hadn’t stopped running since she’d gotten there, a fact that she refused to consider the implications of. She timidly jabbed at the logs a few times, trying to stoke the dying flames, but all she appeared to do was extinguish them further.

Sighing again, she noted her breath had begun to show in the cooling air once more.

 _Drat_. She was going to freeze to death by Christmas, wasn’t she?

She contemplated bringing the space heater out into the main area – though it was on the small side and rinky-dink and probably wouldn’t be overly successful at heating the entire area including kitchen – or even just calling it a night and going to bed. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket, absently making note of the one service bar that kept flickering in and out, not unlike her sad fire. It was 5:16 PM.

Going to bed before 5:30 in the evening would be a new low for her, and without supper to boot, but she still considered it for even the briefest of moments – it _had_ been a long drive – when suddenly, she heard the unmistakable sound of a car approaching.

At first, she thought she must be hallucinating. Perhaps reliving the drive she had just been thinking about. She darted over to the front door and peered out the small window.

 _Shit_. It appeared as though the cold hadn’t seeped into her brain to that extent, just yet. But she had bigger problems.

A black sports car was struggling to approach – lots of engine revving and not a lot of movement – the headlights shining offensively into her eyes. She blinked hard and looked away, her breathing escalating.

Who the _fuck_ could this possibly be?

Luke had never mentioned a guest, or a caretaker ( _in_ _that_ _car?_ her lucid brain cried), or anyone else that she should have been expecting at any juncture. In fact, the whole point had been about _solitude_ —why would he send her up there knowing that she would have company?

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket to call him – quickly, before the unwanted visitor approached. She looked out the window again to gauge how much time she had. The car had stopped (possibly died?) and a man was unfolding himself from the interior – an extremely large, imposing man, who for all intents and purposes looked too big for the sleek, sporty vehicle he had been occupying moments before.

Glancing down at her phone, she felt her stomach sink. No service. She had no way of calling Luke – or for help, if murderers drove Audi R8s in snowstorms.

The snow was coming down hard now, to the point where she felt renewed surprise that he had made it to begin with, particularly in that vehicle. Even in the waning light of day, she could see it was practically a white-out, the flurries from before having turned into a full blizzard. Her car was already almost entirely buried, with snow coming up almost past the rims and a good thirty centimetres resting on top.

The pale blue of her trusty Civic – particularly pathetic-looking next to its shinier, younger, infinitely pricier new neighbour – blended in with the snow, but not enough that it escaped the attention of the stranger.

She watched as he stopped to stare at it, as though working out a puzzle in his head. He turned abruptly to look towards the house and she swore she could feel his eyes boring directly into hers through the small, square-shaped window she was peering out of, though the distance and dim light between them would have likely made that impossible.  

Instinctively she ducked, though logically she had no idea why. Either way, he was coming in, unless his master plan all along was to drive his 200-thousand dollar car out to an abandoned cabin in the woods in the middle of a snowstorm so he could sit on the front porch and wait for a very cold death. Still, while she wasn’t keen on the idea of contributing to said death, she also wasn’t convinced that _she_ was entirely safe, so as she saw him lean into his car and pull out a duffel bag – leather, it looked like, and at least twice the size of hers ( _dear_ God, _had he come here to_ _bury a body?_ ) – and begin to trudge through the knee-high snow towards the door of the cabin, she deftly flipped the lock closed on the front door handle. She didn’t know how well it would keep him out, but dammit, she had to try.

Frantically, she glanced down at her phone again. Still no service.

She tried to move back towards the kitchen where she had gotten a flickering bar earlier in the day – and also where, conveniently, all the knives were – when she heard a thump against the door.

Inadvertently, she let out a short scream. The door handle jiggled and she thanked whatever deity was listening that she’d had the wherewithal to lock it, to at least buy some time.

No sooner had she thought it, when the door swung open. Silhouetted in its meagre frame was the stranger, even larger and more imposing than he’d appeared getting out of his car.

This time there was nothing abbreviated about her scream.

“ _Jesus_ ,” the stranger-murderer boomed, his deep voice reverberating in the small space, before slamming the door behind him. “Don’t fucking scream, I’m not going to murder you.” He tossed his body-carrying duffel to the floor and unwrapped the scarf from around his neck, shaking the snow from his dark, curling locks.

The first thing she’d noticed was his height, since it was impossible to ignore, but as she looked at him closely she began to take measure of some of his other features as well. Tall, to be sure, and big all around – wide shoulders, strong arms, broad chest. His face was unique, but not unattractive, a prominent nose, eyes that appeared dark and soulful in a way that aged him, his lips sulky and full. His heavy brows drew together in an agitated furrow, obviously extremely perturbed by her presence – and reaction to his presence.

 _Pull it together, toad._ “That’s what a murderer would say,” Rey responded, trying to keep her voice steady. She stepped further back into the kitchen, side-eyeing the drawers where she thought the knives might be.

He stopped in the momentum of taking off his coat – Moncler, _obviously_ – to turn and give her a slow, incredulous look of disgust.

“ _Is it?_ ” he asked, genuine in his disbelief – presumably at her abject stupidity.  

She was without a good answer, so instead she just shrugged.

He appeared to visibly rein himself in with a deep inhale and a small shake of his head, before calmly removing his jacket the rest of the way and placing both it and his scarf on the coat rack by the front door, next to her own – decidedly shabbier – coat. He stared at her coat for a beat, as though _it_ were the intruder, then he turned to look at her, the same aura of calmness exuding from him.

“So, okay,” he began, almost pleasantly. But not quite. “Okay.” He met her gaze with his own and held his hands out, the picture of civil magnanimity. “What can I get for you? To make the trip easier?” He turned back to the front door, peered outside the window. “I mean, ideally, it would be a new car. But maybe we can find some chains somewhere for the tires, at the very least.”

“I…” She gaped at him, her mouth opening and closing, at a complete loss for words. “I beg your pardon?”

“Listen,” he continued in that same, infuriatingly pseudo-pleasant tone, taking a few steps closer to her. “I get it. I do. Times are tough. You see a cabin, it looks abandoned. Easy enough to set up camp for a little while. I don’t fault you one bit.” He stopped about five feet away from her, holding his hands up, almost in surrender, until she noticed he was waving them slightly, up and down, in that placating motion people do when dealing with feral animals. “But you can’t stay here any longer. And if you go now, I won’t even call the cops!” He said the last bit like a dangling carrot; a reward for good behaviour.

Her shock rendered her speechless for a beat.

“Call the—” she spluttered, once she found her voice. “I am—this is—I am _entitled_ to be here, sir! I was _invited_ here! Who, pray tell, are _you_?”

God  _damn_ it. The Victorian Governess always came out when she was angry, scared, or upset. She hated sounding like a parody of an upper middle-class British citizen from the late nineteenth century, but it was her automatic fall back, from spending her formative years training her accent to sound more RP or “posh”, vis-a-vis the series and soaps that were common when she was growing up.

He huffed out a laugh, more caustic than amused, and shook his head. “Look, lady, this is my family’s cabin so I don’t know who you think you’re fooling. I’m sympathetic to your plight, truly I am—” _Sure didn’t sound like it_. “—but you can’t stay here anymore. I donate to charity; I do my part. And it doesn’t include housing the Little Match Girl for the holiday season.”

He had no way of knowing how deeply his final, cruel jab cut, but in that moment, she hated this arrogant, probable-murderer with every fibre of her being.

“Look here, you.” She stood up to her considerable height of five-foot-seven, instinctively employing the same intimidation tactics she used on her adolescent students, despite the fact that this man towered over her in breadth and height. “I’m not some–some homeless orphan—” _Half true_. “—who’s only _squatting_ in this cabin for the foreseeable future.” Taking another step closer to him, she jutted her finger up towards his stupid face. “I don’t care what family you _think_ this belongs to, but I was _invited_ here by the actual owner, who I know for a _fact_ is childless, so unless you—unless you’re—” She faltered, slowly beginning to put together the pieces of who, exactly, this stranger might be.

For his part, he remained stoic, the only outward sign of any emotion being a slight tic under his left eye.

Luke had only mentioned him in passing, his sister’s son. Usually in a reference to him as a child – “A serious, sullen boy” – or as an allusion to some sort of tragedy that he refused to address in detail – “When everything happened with Ben” – but the occasions had been so rare, so few and far between, the information had barely clicked into Rey’s brain until this very moment.

His sister’s son.

“Are you...Ben?” she asked tentatively, still not entirely sure, though she couldn’t imagine it being anyone else.

His nostrils flared and his eyes grew flinty. He crossed his arms over his chest. Rey did _not_ notice the bulging muscles under his black cashmere sweater. When he spoke, his voice was deep, gritty.

“Alright. Maybe I will call the cops after all.”

Her ire rose again as she regarded him, so smug and so _sure_ that, by the virtue of his presence alone, he had the right to dictate whether she stayed or went — out into a snowstorm, to boot.

“And tell them _what,_ precisely?” she snapped. “I have every right to be here. Luke said I could stay at least until the new year.” She hadn’t been planning on staying beyond Christmas – two weeks alone over the holidays was a bit much, even for her, a practised veteran of loneliness – but this asshole didn’t need to know that.

“Oh, really?” His face was the picture of indulgent interest, though the same prevalent disdain could be seen in his gaze. “And how much are you paying for your vacation?”

She flushed hotly. Of course she had offered, but Luke hadn’t wanted to accept her money and insisted she would be doing him a favour by going.

 _“These old bones don’t do so well in the winter anymore. I prefer to stay in well-heated establishments, if I can help it,”_ he’d said, with a wry smile.

“I’m helping in other ways,” she muttered, trying to think about what, exactly, it was that Luke needed her to do. _Check to make sure everything’s still working_ , was the only concrete instruction she could recall, though it was unclear what, exactly, “everything” encompassed.

“I’m sure you are.” Ben’s dry, acrid tone permeated her thoughts.

Her embarrassment turned to outrage, the tips of her ears growing hot with anger and something akin to shame, albeit misplaced.

“What’s  _that_ supposed to mean exactly?” she bit out, highly offended by his implications.

He gave a lazy shrug, as though the answer made no difference to him either way. “Regardless of your... _relationship_ with my uncle, you can’t stay. And that’s that.” He turned and peered out the front window again, though the sky had darkened to a deep navy at that point and it was next to impossible to see anything past the glare of the interior lights. “I’ll help you by pushing you out halfway down to the main road and then you should be fine from there,” he added magnanimously.

She couldn’t help it. She actually laughed, out loud. In his face.

“You’re mad,” she said incredulously. “You’re actually mad. I’m stuck in this cabin with a madman.”

A storm cloud passed over his face at her words. The anger and – was that hurt? – on his face almost took her breath away. In that moment, she genuinely considered whether or not she needed to be fearful of her safety at the hands of this virtual stranger – a relation to Luke, sure, but what did that really mean, anyway?

“You need,” he ground out finally, after taking several deep inhales in what appeared to be an attempt to calm himself down, “to leave. Now. I came here for fucking solitude and I am going—” He punctuated each subsequent word with a finger jab in the air directed towards her “—to—get— _fucking—solitude._ ”

He stalked over to the front door and threw it open while staring at her, exposing the inside of the cabin to the howling wind and sharp, blinding flurries of the storm outside.

“So, get—” He cut himself off, mid-violent-gesture towards the outdoors, as though just noticing for the first time how bad the storm actually was. The snow pelted the door and the entryway, even going so far as to hit Rey, standing in the kitchen. The wind swept in and crackled the waning fire, chilling the already cold interior even further. A shiver ran through Rey and she noticed Ben shudder simultaneously.

He slammed the door and ran both his hands through his hair. He looked over at Rey, jaw clenched, as understanding swept through him.

She wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was he.

“ _Fuck_.” The curse sounded like it came out from somewhere deep within his chest, a cross between anger and despair.

She couldn’t help but feel affronted. She wasn’t _that_ bad company, honestly. All they had to do was ride out the storm, anyway. How bad could it—

At that moment, the wind howled around the exterior of the cabin in a heavy fury, rattling the windows, the walls. The lights flickered once, twice.

And then went out entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://pin.it/ljybuixv3yhkdk) is some of my inspo for the cabin. 
> 
> Though it's not expressly mentioned, the cabin is somewhere in [Muskoka](https://www.discovermuskoka.ca). 
> 
> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7rQvJgTQ9U) is the song that inspired the title. (And [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdaRG8CQugc) is the kd lang version, because... well, you'll know when you hear it.)
> 
> Everyone should have a dog-eared copy of [Persuasion](https://www.amazon.ca/Persuasion-Jane-Austen/dp/0199535558/) and not just because voicedimplosives is writing [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511147/chapters/38673128) beautiful AU.
> 
> Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or kudos - I love hearing back from readers (it sort of, you know, validates this whole fandom experience... making memories here, people.)


	2. the arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge, unbelievable thanks to my ride or dies: [slipgoingunder](http://slipgoingunder.tumblr.com) for spending TWO HOURS with me figuring out CSS and work skins and AO3 bullshit so that I could put some frickin snowflakes in my story (read her fic [Doing the Unstuck](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877074/chapters/36993807) to see her css prowess in full effect). And [voicedimplosives](http://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com) for helping me as I researched things like solar-powered water pumps and for answering yet more of my cabin-related questions, including toilet-specific inquiries, with grace and aplomb. 
> 
> (There will come a day when I do not spend the beginning notes gushing about these ladies. Today was not that day.)
> 
> Finally, thanks to all of you who read and left comments and kudos. You've made my heart grow three sizes this day. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 
> 
> That's enough of me blabbing. Onto Chapter 2!

* * *

It took Ben Solo until his fourth hour in the car before he realized where he was driving. 

When he had packed that morning, still in a shamed fury from the previous day, and thrown his duffel into the backseat, he hadn’t had an explicit destination in mind. All he’d known was that he needed to get the fuck out of New York City, preferably even New York State, possibly even the goddamn country. And as he drove north along the I-81 and hit Syracuse, something clicked in his brain.

What had begun as an aimless drive, in the ambiguous and indeterminate direction of “far away”, had ended up taking on a familiar route, one he’d been on many times before, usually in the back seat of his dad’s old Falcon, his mother navigating in the front—“ _up north, past the border, west along the lake, and north again until you hit the trees.”_

The directions were etched somewhere deep inside of him, in a place that largely went unchecked and ignored. A place he hadn’t tapped into in ages. A place he’d tried to forget.

Once he’d realized that that was where he was going, it didn’t take him long to accept it. At the very least, his grandfather’s cabin was the perfect place to clear his head for a few days. Through the haze of his rage hangover, he felt the stirrings of relief that he had grabbed his laptop at the last minute.

From what he could recall, it was totally isolated – a retreat deep within the woods, where a neighbour couldn’t be seen for miles ( _Or kilometres_ , he supposed). The old place hadn’t even had a washroom in the early years, until his father – fed up with trudging to a rancid outhouse several times a day – had one put in “for our sanity and sanitation,” as he’d grumbled.

Washroom notwithstanding, it was still a rickety dive – no proper heating, barely a bedroom to its name. He’d have to chop some firewood when he got there, he mused, wondering if he still remembered how. Reflecting on whether or not it would diffuse some of this tension he felt, spiraling through his body, infiltrating his lungs, his bloodstream, pressing down hard on his chest.

Despite the thought of the place being in shambles – a home for cobwebs and spiders, a shell of the already-decrepit place of his memories – there was a pinch deep inside of him. A feeling that was the shadow of another; an old emotion, so old it was almost wholly unfamiliar. But it was persistent enough, prodding enough, that he was forced to bring it to the fore, if only just a bit.

It was anticipation.

A sensation akin to staring at the ceiling on Christmas Eve, not seeing anything in the inky blackness of the room except for the idea of all the gifts to be opened the next morning.

Not that going to his grandfather’s cottage was anything like Christmas morning, no. But nostalgia was a powerful thing, Ben conceded. Nostalgia dismissed the bad memories. Nostalgia blocked out the fights on the drive up and the times when Han was delegated to the couch, which meant Ben was delegated to the floor. Nostalgia _refused_ to acknowledge the outhouse.

Instead, Ben was infused with the memory of laughter. Of chocolate chip cookies with bottoms that were a bit too burnt (he’d still eat twelve in a day). Of snowmen with bases almost as tall as him. Of learning how to chop wood with his dad in the summers so they could be prepared for the winter – shirtless, because his dad was shirtless, probably to get Leia to look at him with something other than disappointment. Han was large and muscular in those days and Ben was scrawny and pale, but they both wielded axes to the – _for_ the – joy and admiration of his mother.

He shook his head roughly to clear it before his thoughts continued down a path that he wasn’t interested in following. And he drove on.

* * *

He reached the turn off where there was supposed to be something of a driveway that took him to the general area of the cabin. The problem was, his faded memories and failing GPS were mainly operating on uncertainties: “supposed to be”s and “possibly”s rather than anything like, heaven forbid, a fucking street sign. 

To make matters worse, the snow had begun when he was still about two hours out, just slightly north of the city. The further north he went, the worse it got, until his car – even with seventeen hundred dollars worth of winter tires on it – could barely make the slow turns he was taking.

He pressed his foot down harder on the gas as the car struggled to make it up the pass. It must have been at least a foot deep at that point and coming down heavily, which meant visibility was shit, too. Ben wasn’t even positive he had made the correct turn and, for all he knew, his car could be revving up a hill, only to go right off a cliff. Or into a snowy lake. He had thought he’d seen the old wooden sign his grandfather had posted when the cabin had first been built – the words on it completely faded now, lost to history, but the shape and look of it memorable enough – though, honestly, who really even knew at this point.

He could feel his jaw aching from the pressure of gritting his teeth for the last twenty-five minutes. He was sweating in his winter coat and scarf, which he’d mistakenly put back on after putting in gas over an hour ago. The sky had already begun to turn navy from orange, the daylight rapidly fading. He knew as soon as it got dark out, that’s when his issues would really begin.

 _What a goddamn mistake this was_ , he thought, squinting through the haze of flurries, his wipers moving at maximum speed. Nine fucking hours in the car, only to die a cold, wintery death on pseudo-arrival. Just as he’d begun to give up hope of ever reaching the summit, resigning himself to his Sisyphean fate of revving up the same hill for all eternity, he thought he spotted something through the blinding whiteness.

Was that—?

 _Yes_. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding in a gust of air that almost fogged his windshield.

He’d made it.

His grandfather’s cabin loomed above the rise, a break from the trees and snow blanketing the land as far as the eye could see.

 _Thank God_.

As relief coursed through his body, making him almost lightheaded, he realized in that moment that, despite some of his more self-destructive tendencies, he hadn’t actually wanted to die that day. _Good_ _to_ _know_.

As he slowly rolled up towards the cabin, something caught his eye that he’d missed before. Parked just to his right, under a mound of snow, was the unmistakable shape of a car. He cut the ignition as he felt his heart thunk in an irregular rhythm for just a moment – _who_ could that possibly be?

The car didn’t look familiar, although it was reminiscent of the type of his clunker his father had liked to drive to the ground, always fiddling with this or that trying to get a bit more juice out of it, much to his mother’s everlasting frustration – _“Is air-conditioning_ too much _to ask?”_ she would snap, more than once – and that automatically set his teeth on edge.

Yet another reason why it was a bad idea, coming here. Already, the memories had begun to insidiously creep their way towards the edges of his mind and, despite his efforts to bat them away, their claws were sinking in.

He got out of his car and paused a minute, staring, still trying to place the strange vehicle on his family’s property. He turned towards the cabin to see if he could spot any movement inside, but the window was dark – all he saw was a reflection of the snow outside in the waning light of the day.

Well. He wasn’t going to figure it out standing in a blizzard. He grabbed his duffel bag out of the backseat of his car, heavy despite the fact that he thought he’d packed light. When he’d left that morning, with no destination in mind, he’d tossed in enough for a few days away – four, five, maybe seven, tops?

Closing and locking his car (though he was certain nobody else would cross the path of the cabin, he was still uncertain about the owner of the – he glanced back, assessingly – ‘84 Shitbox) he trudged his way towards the house, legs buried past his ankles, snow seeping into his Varvatos chukkas almost instantaneously. The cold air felt good against his heated skin, but the pelting snow ruined any further enjoyment of the great outdoors.

He got to the front door and dropped his duffel on the porch, wincing as he belatedly remembered his laptop was in there. As his bag landed, he heard a noise from inside – as though a mouse’s squeak had been amplified.

So he _wasn’t_ going to be alone. Despite the hints he’d already been afforded with the presence of the car outside, this was still an extremely unpleasant realization.

Sighing frustratedly, he went to turn the doorknob. It appeared as though the person inside had attempted to lock it without knowing that the door didn’t actually lock properly; all it took was a jiggle and a shoulder shove to get it to bust open. No one in his family had ever changed it, because no one had seen fit to do so; only a few people – usually just one or two, maybe up to four in its heyday – ever went there or even  _knew_ how to get there for that matter.

Taking a bracing breath, he grabbed his bag, then the door handle. He jiggled and shoved and entered the cabin in two large steps.

And was brought up short by an ear-piercing shriek.

“ _Jesus_.” He reflexively brought his shoulders up to his ears, cringing at the sound, before making sure the door closed tightly against the wind at his back. “Don’t fucking scream, I’m not going to murder you,” he reassured the strange, screaming person on his family’s property, as he tossed his bag – gentler this time – to the floor and tore into his winter gear, desperate to get out of it. He ran his hand through his hair, already wet and curling around his fingers, before looking up to take the measure of whoever this person was.

He found himself doing a quick double blink, his breath catching in his throat.

God damn.

Whoever she was, she was so pretty it took him a second to recover. Tall, slender – he could tell even through the baggy sweater and sweatpants she wore – her hair in a messy bun, and without a stitch of make-up on her face. She looked tired, he thought, but it didn’t detract from how attractive she was. _Fresh_. That was the best word to describe her. A clean, open face. Dimples that he could see, even with her lips pursed in a panicked moue. Wide, expressive eyes that tilted up at the ends. Pretty. So, so pretty.

It made him irrationally angry.

Who was this pretty person, here intruding on his solitude, on _his family’s_ land? Who gave her the right?

He felt like he knew the type immediately – young, college-aged without actually receiving any sort of formal education, coming from all over to get a true “person of the woods” experience on as small of a budget as possible. Realized she couldn’t hack the outdoors once winter approached. Found a cabin that she thought was abandoned. Took up residence.

 _Well_ , he thought resolutely, _not_ _here_.

He began to shrug off his coat, but had to pause upon hearing her response to his reassurance about not being a murderer:

_“That’s what a murderer would say.”_

She seemed to know an awful lot about murderers. “ _Is it_?” he wondered, genuinely curious about whether or not she believed that. He hung up his coat as they spoke, pausing for a moment to consider the domesticity of seeing their coats hanging together on the hook, side by side.

Immediately, he shook his head at the direction his thoughts had taken him once more. About this girl, this—this _stranger._

This always happened. One day, a mad, uncontrollable fury. The next, a self-pitying fool. Sentimental. Romantic, but in the tragic way. He released a disgusted exhale and took a deep breath to clear his mind and calm his emotions.

Then, he spent the next several minutes trying to convince her to leave.

Admittedly, he wasn’t using the most tactful approach and he knew it. He couldn’t say he was proud of his strategy, exactly, but he was desperate to get her to go — he _knew_ in his bones that it was necessary for his sanity and peace of mind  

If he’d been thinking things through clearly, he would have realized that it was tantamount to murder – maybe she hadn’t been wrong about that after all – to send a young woman out into a blizzard of that magnitude. And in that car.

But all he could consider in that moment was the need to be _alone_. To put a stop to his melancholic and nostalgic thoughts, start a fire – _a real one_ , he thought, glancing at the sad little embers in the hearth, barely mustering a pity glow – and write. Or sleep. Or both. Or neither. Whatever it was that he wanted to do, he wanted to do in solitude and in peace and in silence.

And he could tell, almost instantaneously,  that this girl, with her cute little British accent and fierce expression, wouldn’t provide him with _any_ of those things.

“—I don’t care what family you _think_ this belongs to,” she was saying, worked up into a proper fury at this point, “but I was _invited_ here by the actual owner, who I know for a _fact_ is childless, so unless you—unless you’re—” She faltered.

For the first time, it dawned on him that perhaps he’d jumped to conclusions.

There was a chance – he watched as her eyes took on a light of recognition as she stared at him, her jaw going slack, a little furrow between her brows – there was a chance, god damn it, that she wasn’t a squatter or a camper or a nutjob.

“Are you...Ben?” she asked, hesitantly, and he felt his body grow cold from the inside out.

 _Who did she know?_ It couldn’t be his mother. His mother would have _never_ missed the opportunity to set him up with his girl. It wouldn’t have been his father – she looked no more than twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, which meant she would have been too young— _plus_ , he realized belatedly, _she’d_ _said_ _childless_ —

Luke. It must be Luke.

His jaw clenched as he inhaled deeply through his nostrils, eyes narrowing. What the fresh fuck had Luke told her about him? When he spoke his voice sounded rusty, unused. “Alright. Maybe I will call the cops after all.”

She, predictably, flared in anger again, yelling at him about her rights and her invitation and her expected timeline and it just made him _sick_. Luke once again with his little mentees, training them in the art of pedagogy and child psychology, churning out little carbon copies of himself as the ultimate and repeated manifestation of his ego.

He knew what followed was him responding in abject anger, in snide and inappropriate ways, but he couldn’t stop the roiling fury from escaping him, a residue, aftershock, from what he had experienced the day before in the Barnes and Noble on 5th Avenue.

And when she called him crazy – not knowing the sore spot she had cattle-prodded, but having it reverberate through him nonetheless – something actually snapped.

Without realizing what he was doing, with no clue what he even said, he stalked over to the front door and threw it open as a last-ditch effort to usher her out of his godforsaken face.

The wind howled in, rattling the windows, extinguishing even the orange glow left in the fireplace. Snow pelted his face and back, sweeping into the entryway in broad strokes, whipping around them in a frozen cyclone. He shivered and saw her wrap her arms around herself tighter.

The weather brought him back to life, back to the present, into the moment where he was supposed to be, standing there in his grandfather’s cabin, trying to force a strange woman out into what would undoubtedly be certain death. She, very clearly, was not going anywhere. Neither was he.

“ _Fuck_.” He felt the curse well up from the depths of his soul, a combination of “ _now what?”_ in conjunction with the only expression of his anger that could possibly suffice in that moment.

 _Things could not possibly get worse from here_.

Ah, but he should have known better. After all, his one constant in life was exactly that: things _always_ managed to get worse. To prove his point, in the seconds after the thought entered his mind, the storm outside unleashed a fury of wind and sleet and, after a shuddering groan that reverberated through the very beams of the cabin, the power cut out entirely.

“Fuck!” This time, the expletive came from both of them, several beats after they were submerged in tepid darkness.

“Now what?” she wailed, the first to recover. “We have no service, no stove, I can’t start a fire, and all my cheese is going to go bad!”

Her _cheese_?

Despite the turn that the conversation took, he was momentarily distracted by relief. So she had broughy food. That was good, at least.

As he’d crossed the Canadian border, he’d briefly considered stopping somewhere to pick up some groceries before completing his drive. But, he’d reasoned, it was better to just get there first and then worry about it later. He knew his mother had always kept non-perishables around and he’d assumed that hadn’t changed. And there was a little supermarket about ten minutes away that he’d figured he could pop into once he got settled.

What he hadn’t anticipated was getting caught in the snow storm of the century on his way up. By the time he made it anywhere close to the cabin, his thoughts had been entirely focused on surviving the drive and not so much on food. It hadn’t occurred to him again at all until the moment she just mentioned cheese.

“It’s fine,” he rumbled, trying to think and plan. “Your cheese will be fine. The power will come back on soon.” _Hopefully._ “Just don’t open the fridge door more than necessary. Did you turn on the gas?”

“Yes!” She nodded enthusiastically.

 _God, she’s cute_. _Stop,_ came his contradictory and unbidden thoughts. 

“That was the first thing I did,” she continued.

He nodded back, his mind going a mile a minute. “Okay. Then the stove should work, we just need something to light the burners with. And the water? Did you turn on the water?”

“Uhhh.”

 _So that was a no_. “You turned on the gas but not the water?” he asked, trying to tamp down his annoyance - at her, his useless uncle, the situation. “Were you not planning on flushing the toilet?”

He could literally _see_ her hackles rise. “Luke told me about the gas, he didn’t say anything about the water. How would I know it needed to be turned on?”

“The water can’t stay on indefinitely, because then the pipes would burst,” he explained patiently, although perhaps not as patiently as he thought, because he noticed her gaze grow narrower and her jaw clench.

“Well, now what?” she asked, frustrated.

“I’ll go out and do it,” he said, sighing as he thought of his shoes. “It’s too hard to explain where it is anyway. You gather stuff to make food. Did you buy bottled waters?”

“Yeah, but like, a ten-pack.”

He chewed his lip as he considered. “Okay. Let’s save those for drinking. When I come back in, we’ll run the water for a few minutes to clear the pipes and then boil two large pots for cooking with.”

“Is the water not safe?” she wondered, eyeing the taps nervously.

He shrugged. “It’s well water. Might not kill you, but it could make you sick. And there isn’t anyone around often enough to make sure it stays clean. Better to be safe than sorry.” He glanced at the fireplace. “And as soon as I come back in, I’ll make a fire, or else we’re going to freeze.” He’d already noticed their breath forming clouds in front of their mouths as they spoke and his squatter – he realized he didn’t even know her name yet – looked chilled to the bone and miserable. “You good?”

“Huh?” She looked at him and ran her sleeve across her nose. _Charming._ “Yes, yes I’m fine. I’ll get dinner going. Erm—” She looked around blindly. “Candles?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He walked further into the cabin, brushing past her slightly. She smelled like clean laundry and lavender and the scent immediately stuck in his nostrils. He rummaged around the kitchen for a minute before producing candles of varying shapes and sizes, some small dishes to hold the dripping wax, and a flashlight that took a few whacks but eventually turned on. “Okay. I’ll be back.” At that moment, the cabin rattled with a particularly forceful wind gust. “Hopefully,” he added wryly.

“Be careful.”

The words brought him up short and he looked at her, unsure of how to feel.

He couldn’t make out her expression in the dark, so it ended up being an awkward blind staring contest until he grunted in response and left.

* * *

When Ben Solo left the cabin, Rey let out a deep breath she hadn’t realized had been caught in her chest. Aside from the emotional toll that entire exchange had taken on her, her body also felt heavy, her arms sore as though she’d been carrying weights back and forth across the length of the cabin for hours. 

She’d known she’d had the sniffles and, in the last several minutes, the beginnings of a migraine that often preceded a head cold, but the aches – that was new.

 _Dinner_ , she thought resolutely, putting it out of her mind for the time being. She looked around the kitchen that was now almost pitch-black. _But first, the candles._

By the time Ben had re-entered, the kitchen was lit up with about five different candles in varying locations, she had buttered six slices of bread (one-and-a-half sandwiches each), unwrapped five slices of cheese ( _might as well use them if they were going to go bad anyway_ ) dug out a frying pan and two large pots that looked relatively clean, plus one medium-sized pot, and was measuring out the powdered cheese and macaroni from the boxed package to try and get precisely half of the ingredients she needed.

He came in like the storm itself, blustering and stomping and shaking off his coat, cursing and muttering under his breath.

“Jesus,” he said, hanging his coat up again. “It’s no joke out there.” He started to walk towards her.

“Uh-uh.” She stopped him with a spatula she had just dug out of one of the drawers, pointing it in his direction. “Shoes off.”

He looked down at his feet and then back up at her. “Are you serious?”

“Are _you_?” she returned. “You just came in from, like, ten feet of snow. You’re soaked. I don’t want to be stepping in puddles all night.”

He opened his mouth, presumably to argue again, when instead he rolled his eyes. “They’ll be skating rinks instead of puddles if we don’t get a fire going in here,” he muttered, kicking his impractical and expensive-looking boots towards the front door. “I’m going to change and start the fire.” He ambled towards her on his way to grabbing his duffel. “What are you making?” As he spoke, he seemed to reconsider his destination and left his bag on the floor, continuing past her to turn on the faucet. With a deep groan, the water began to splutter, then spray out in sporadic bursts.

“Mac and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches,” she announced, proudly. Quality fare if there was any.

His lip curled. “Are you a thirteen-year-old boy?” Evidently he disagreed.

Her smile dropped and her eyes narrowed. “What? This is perfect comfort food.”

He rolled his eyes. “One of those canned soups with a thousand milligrams of salt would have been better than this crap.” The spluttering water turned into a steadier stream and he ran his hand under it experimentally. She tried not to notice what a nice hand it was. Nice, big hand.

 _Stop_. “No problem,” she said, adopting a cool tone. “I’ll just eat your portions and you can enjoy your salt soup.”

“Maybe I will,” he muttered, grabbing one of the large pots from where she’d left it on the stove and filling it up.

“Aren’t you going to change?” she reminded him, acidly. _Get out_. Her head pounded.

“In a minute.”

“Whatever. They’re your toes,” she muttered, then tried not to think about his toes.

He finished filling the pot silently and then grabbed the other one.

“I’ll start the burners, since fires don’t seem to be your forte.” He looked around. “What did you use to light the candles?”

Her hands were already on her hips, ready to dispute his comment, when she realized he wasn’t exactly wrong. Instead she sighed, resigned. “I found, like, a million lighters in one of the drawers.” She gestured with her chin towards a small drawer to the right of the stove.

He scoffed. “Yeah, I bet.” When she stared at him expectantly, he continued: “They’re my uncle’s. He was known to, er—”

“Ohh.” She made the universal gesture for smoking a spliff. She’d known that about Luke.  

“Right,” he said, with a huff that sounded like it might be the geriatric cousin of a laugh.

“It’s legal here, you know.” _Why did you say that? Now he’s going to think you get high all the time. He’s going to think you’re high right now._

He cocked his head at her, removing the pot from under the sink and turning off the water. “Yeah. I have television. And internet. I’m aware.”

“Where did you come from anyway?” she asked, magnanimously ignoring his sarcasm, busying herself by sandwiching the orange cheese between her amply buttered bread.

“New York,” he muttered, fiddling with the knobs on the stove.

She paused. “You drove here...from _New York_? City? Or, like, Buffalo?”

“City.” He flicked the lighter experimentally.

She gaped at him. “That’s like—” Mentally, she tried to calculate. “Like, ten hours or something, isn’t it?”

“Nine,” he mumbled, leaning forward and peering closer at the burners.

“You drove _nine hours to get here_?” She was shouting, she knew she was shouting, but _honestly_. “But—why? I’m sure you could’ve flown. We're less than two hours from the airport.”

“Didn’t want to fly.” He flicked the lighter again until a yellow-blue flame appeared and he slowly began inching it towards the back lighter.

“But _why_?” she repeated. Rey knew she could be like a dog with a bone when she wanted an explanation or reasoning or the answer to a question, but she couldn’t figure out why in God’s name Luke’s nephew would willingly drive nine hours to this tiny little shack in the woods three days before Christmas.

“Because, because I just—I wanted—I had—had to—god _fucking dammit_.” His stammering explanation ended in a roar when the burner lit up with an unexpectedly high flame. He flung the lighter across the room and shook his hand furiously, hissing through his teeth.

“Oh—” She automatically rushed towards to him, her first instinct to assess the damage and treat the problem. “Are you okay? Let me see—”

“Move,” he grunted, bumping her aside in a less than gentle manner, before flicking on the water again and allowing it to run over his fingertips, which were already reddening.

She took a step back and swallowed hard, not sure why she felt partially responsible. _He’s just a brute, anyway_ , she thought to herself petulantly, still hovering.

“Are you okay?” she asked again after a minute, clenching her fists at her sides to keep from wringing her hands. The urge to assist was overpowering. _No wonder you were on the verge of a mental breakdown_ , she admonished herself. _Stop taking on other people’s pain and problems._ _Especially when they don’t deserve—_

“Yes,” he replied shortly. “I’m fine.” He slammed off the water. “I’m going to change before my lower legs turn black from frostbite.” He moved the heavy pot onto the lit burner, which now held a reasonably sized flame. “When I come back I’ll do the other burner. _Don’t—_ ” He waited until she glanced up at him. “—Touch it.”

She let out a sound of indignation, but was secretly relieved. She was certain if she were allowed near the burners with a lighter, the whole place would burn down within minutes.

“I mean it,” he repeated, pointing a finger in her direction, before stepping around her and grabbing his bag. He hefted it over his shoulder, muscles bunching and flexing through the thin material of his sweater – _stop it_ – and headed towards the bedroom. Where all her stuff was. She scrambled to think if she’d left any of her underwear lying around – she’d dug through her bag to find her sweats – oh, God, she was in her rattiest sweats, no wonder he thought she was homeless – and clothing had fallen out willy-nilly as she’d scavenged. If there _was_ a God – debatable, at best, in her experience – all her unmentionables would have remained safely tucked away inside. It was a big “if” at this point.

In a last ditch attempt to perhaps distract him and maintain her dignity, she shouted after him as he disappeared beyond the doorway: “And don’t get any ideas about that bedroom! I called it!”

“It’s all yours, sweetheart,” came his return shout. “I’ll sleep by the fire, where it’s warm.”

She stilled.

_Shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could Ben have really made it there [in that car](https://www.cars.com/articles/winter-in-the-audi-r8-is-snow-fun-1420693209106/)? (Probably not.)
> 
> What kind of [winter tires](https://www.pirelli.com/tyres/en-ww/car/find-your-tyres/products-sheet/winter-sottozero3) cost $1700?! 
> 
> In my mind, [this](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Upper+East+Side,+Manhattan,+New+York,+NY,+USA/Uphill,+ON+K0M+2B0/@44.8912327,-79.2995701,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c258bf08488f6b:0x618706a9142daa0d!2m2!1d-73.9565551!2d40.7735649!1m5!1m1!1s0x4cd54228075a1591:0x89b7ca31cdc546f4!2m2!1d-79.009016!2d44.74086!3e0) was Ben's drive. Not exactly Muskoka, but there's a forest, so it works. 
> 
> Would the [stove](https://homeguides.sfgate.com/gas-stove-electronic-ignition-work-during-power-failure-81225.html) have worked without power? 
> 
> How WOULD the water pump [work](https://www.civicsolar.com/support/installer/articles/solar-powered-water-pumping)? 
> 
> What's the deal with [well water](http://hillman.upmc.com/patients/community-support/education/miscellaneous/safe-water-guidelines)? 
> 
> That's it for now! Chapter 3 should be out before the new year!
> 
> ( _Footnotes idea comes from the lovely[Tamara](http://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com) \- go read [all her fics](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives)_)


	3. the first night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Serves me right for getting cocky after finishing Chapter 2 and making promises I couldn't keep, but finally, _finally_ Chapter 3 is here. I'm not going to do the thing where I self-consciously inform you that this chapter has a ton of dialogue and not a whole lot else, letting you know that I'm a bit nervous you won't stick around for what's to come, because I've bored you to tears with all the chit–chat. Nope. NOT going to do that.
> 
> Thank you to my love, [raven-maiden](http://raven-maiden.tumblr.com), for beta-ing this heap. I even made her re-read Chapters 1 and 2 over again for "continuity" ahahaha I'm the worst, she's amazing. 
> 
> Thank you as well to those of you who commented and continue to leave comments and kudos - I love interacting with all of you and it makes me happy to know you're enjoying this silly story, even as it continues beyond the holidays and we haven't even reached Christmas in the story yet. Love y'all!

* * *

Rey groggily drifted into consciousness.

It wasn’t so much that she fully awakened as it was a slow, inhibited shift from a restless sleep to a semi-cognizance.

She took inventory of her limbs ( _aching and stiff_ ), her head ( _throbbing_ ), her breathing ( _impaired_ ), and finally her location. She felt as though she were buried under a pile of old coats, with a furnace attached to her back.

Experimentally, she tilted her head upwards to move her mouth and nose out from under the covers. The cool air hit her face in a way that was both painful and refreshing. The moonlight shining in from the one small window afforded her a glance of her breath, puffing out in a hot cloud. Through her astute powers of deduction, she determined it was freezing in the room. But _she_ wasn’t freezing. In fact, she wasn’t cold at all.

Shifting her hips slightly, she felt the furnace shift behind her as well, before pulling her in closer.

For the first time, she realized that she was encased in two large arms – one wrapped around her waist and curled upwards, a substantial hand cupping her less-than-substantial breast. The other was curled beneath her head, which was resting on an impressive bicep, before tucking into the pillow underneath her.

Rey knew she was sick; the aches, the throbbing head, the stuffed-up nose – all very obvious clues. What she wasn’t was stupid. Or forgetful. So, although it took awhile, longer than she cared to admit, particularly as she kept drifting in and out of consciousness ( _mmm, sleep_ ) she was able to piece together exactly how she’d ended up sleeping in the freezing cold bedroom with this virtual stranger – the man who, mere hours earlier, had been willing to literally toss her out into a blizzard – wrapped around her back like a glove.

* * *

It took Ben less than three minutes – not that she was counting – to return from the bedroom where he had gone to change. Rey had wanted to be studiously working on preparing dinner so she could avoid any sort of continuation of their earlier conversation about sleeping arrangements. Unfortunately, she couldn’t very well do that without any lit burners. She contemplated lighting one herself, despite his warning and her own misgivings, but there was something about the way he’d extracted that promise out of her, with his deep voice and intense eyes, that made her feel like a well-heeled dog.

She wasn’t necessarily pleased with this revelation, but she wasn’t lighting burners either.

Instead, she spent the time adjusting and re-adjusting the already-boiling pot of water by millimetres, flicking the lighter on and off, setting the table with the only two matching dishes she found in the cupboard, digging out cutlery and paper towels for napkins, then feeling stupid and taking away Ben’s plate and cutlery, before finally returning just the cutlery.

It was the moment that she was placing the spoon back on the napkin that he reentered.  

She avoided eye contact, but it wasn’t necessary anyway as he bypassed her entirely and went straight to the stove. In minutes, he had the other three burners lit and two additional pots of water set to boil: the large one he had already filled previously and a smaller one, which he ladled the pre-boiled water of the first pot into.

On the fourth burner, he set down a frying pan, throwing a slab of butter down from the brick she had used to butter the breads. His efficiency left her stunned and a little bit flustered, if she were being perfectly honest with herself. 

Watching him actually begin to cook was what shook her out of her reverie. “Well, hey, I can do that—”

“Where’s the rest of this?” he interrupted, picking up the small measuring cup that held half a bag’s worth of the orange cheese powder from the macaroni box.

“I thought to only make half so we can ration the food. I only bought enough for me—” _Fuuuck._ Well, that just wasn’t true. She’d forgotten how much she’d _actually_ bought ( _there was a sale!_ ) and she knew it was only a matter of seconds before he reached up and opened the cupboard and saw—

Sure enough, he'd looked askance at her and reached over, swinging the cupboard door open. Staring back at both of them were eleven unopened boxes of Kraft dinner.

“You bought…a _dozen_ boxes of mac and cheese. And thought…” He shook his head, as though to clear it. “How much of this shit do you _eat_?”

She was mortified. It was bad enough to admit that he was completely right and that her measuring out the cheese portion had been an automatic impulse borne of habit from, essentially, a lifetime of frugality, rationing, and borderline starvation. And she was feeling frazzled and under the weather and at-odds with this stranger, so instead of actually considering how much she should be making, she reverted back to old, silly habits and ended up looking like a useless ninny.

A deeper, darker part of her stayed mum about another, larger issue, but she couldn’t help how a trace of it surfaced just the same: the idea that she actually had to save the unopened food and bring it home with her, not just use it all up here, because what if she needed it? What if groceries were tight that month and she had to have a few extra boxes of good old KD to spare? Just in case?

That’s how Rey lived her life – how she’d always lived her life.

_Just in case._

She attempted to redirect herself away from the path of self-pity she was barreling down and focus on the conversation at hand. Though she was unsure of how all of that emotional turmoil – over eleven fucking boxes of Kraft Dinner – had played out over her face, it must have shown him _something_ (God, _how humiliating_ ) because he’d gotten very quiet, his lips pressed together, working back and forth slightly in a thoughtful expression, that intense gaze zeroed in on her face. She opened her mouth to speak, hoping for some snappy retort to manifest – _Don't you have soup to make? –_ and not something otherwise ridiculous or mawkish, but he beat her to it.

“What’s your name, anyway?” He lifted the pan and tilted it from side to side, coating the bottom with the melted butter.

She gaped at him as she realized that, of course - he had no idea. She hadn’t told him. He didn’t have the benefit of mutual acquaintances to inform him. Why would he know?

“It’s Rey,” she said. “Rey Johnson.”

“Rey.” He tested it out, his voice deepening slightly (or was that just her imagination, _god, she was a loser._ ) She waited for the inevitable comment – a comparison to a famous actor, a remark on the typical gender of a person with that name, a request for the “full version”, or any of the other fun, mixed bag questions and remarks she usually got when she told people – but it never came. Instead, he gave a short nod, and spoke again:

“Did you buy any booze, Rey?”

“I—” She thought about the three – two and a half – bottles of red wine. “Yes. Yes I did.”

“Perfect. You get the booze. I’ll deal with this.” He transferred a sandwich to the sizzling pan, before sending her a sidelong glance. “Thank you for prepping everything.” He paused and then shot her a rueful half-smile, that still – pitifully – managed to take her breath away. “And for letting me eat your food. We'll save the soup for another time.” There was that smile again, just a deepening of the almost–dimple on the left side of his face. 

“Oh—” She was entirely taken aback by his momentary kindness – and smile – that she tripped over her words completely. “That’s—I  mean, I couldn’t very well—it’s not a—welcome. You’re welcome! No problem.” _You can do this_. “Okay. Wine.” She backed away from him slowly, task at hand.

* * *

In the ensuing fifteen minutes, Ben set aside two pots of boiled water, finished cooking, draining, and mixing the sludge she seemed inordinately attached to that she tried to pass off as pasta, flipped and grilled three, perfectly golden-browned sandwiches with an orange substance in the middle that he refused to call cheese, and, as Rey poured the wine – he wasn’t even going to get _started_ on her selections there – and finished setting the table (deeming him worthy of a plate this time, it seemed), he built a roaring fire in the hearth that almost immediately warmed the entire cabin.

It was the most productive he’d felt in months.

Admittedly, it helped that he’d caught Rey staring at him, more than once, with a look on her face that could only be described as “dumbfounded, begrudging admiration”. It was the admiration part he would take, since it typically only seemed to last for as long as it took until a person really got to know him.

Finally, they both sat down across from each other at the table, a helping of Kraft Dinner and one–and–a-half sandwiches each.

She stared at his portions while biting her lip. “Is that enough for you?” she asked, a notch between her brows as she stared up at him.

He looked down at his plate.

It was safe to say that he hadn’t eaten a grilled cheese sandwich in a very long time and orange macaroni and cheese in even longer – if ever. He tried, really he did, to not be a snob when it came to his assessment of the meal. And he truly was grateful to her for sharing her groceries with him, particularly as he thought back to the stricken look on her face when he’d brought up the countless boxes of macaroni she had stowed away in the cupboard – a reaction he was still attempting to unpack.

But years – decades, really – of eating “organic, naturally-sourced, oftentimes plant-based, always grain-fed, hormone-free, minimal gluten, predominantly- _not_ -bright-orange” foods, based off of whatever diets his mother had put him on from childhood onwards to “help with things”, made it difficult to acclimate to fare that was decidedly…processed.

He glanced back up at her, still staring at him with the same expression on her face, though now her cheek was stuffed with a bite of sandwich that she was slowly chewing as she awaited his response.

His answer felt important. As though it would determine something.

He looked down at his plate again. “Actually…” He carefully transferred his half piece of grilled cheese to her plate. “I ate a big lunch. You have this, too.”

She looked at him skeptically. “In the car?”

He thought of the foul Panera Bread veggie wrap he’d picked up while driving through Watertown. “Yep.”

She continued to stare at him assessingly, as though trying to figure out how he might have poisoned the sandwich in the milliseconds between transferring it from his plate to hers.

“Seriously,” he assured her. “I’m fine. This is…” He glanced down and tried to disguise his grimace. “More than enough.”

She snorted between bites. “It’s not going to kill you, geez. Ugh, darn.” She looked down at her own plate suddenly. “I forgot the ketchup.”

He stared at her, aghast and unable to hide it. “On what part of this do you add... _ketchup_?”

“Oh, gosh,” she enthused, “I mean, really it could work with either—”

He tried to tamp down his nausea with a big gulp of wine.

* * *

Dinner ended up being a thorough consumption of their meal (some more enthusiastic about it than others) where the focus was primarily eating, interspersed with random interjections – a brief foray into the uses of ketchup, the odd intimacy of Rey grabbing a glass to split a bottle of water with Ben, a lesson on building an upside-down fire that could last for hours (Ben’s record was seven, which he relayed with no small measure of pride), culminating in a random moment of domesticity that had him at a bit of a loose end when all was said and done.

It happened after the last bit of ketchup ( _shudder_ ) had been swiped up by Rey’s last bite of grilled cheese; which, coincidentally, happened to also be the last piece of Ben’s uneaten sandwich – “Waste not, want not,” she’d cheerfully warbled, reaching over onto his plate – and she’d immediately stood up and scooped up the plates from underneath them, taking them to the sink.

“I can help you with that—” Ben was also up and out of his seat before she could even reach the counter, suddenly feeling awkward and ungainly getting out of his small chair at the small table in the small kitchen. The wine glasses – already refilled twice, yet now empty once more – rattled as he stood.

“No need,” she insisted, placing the plates in the sink and turning on the water. “Look at that,” she marveled. “No power and yet water still. I’ve never experienced that.”

“Solar-powered pump,” he said, by way of explanation. Luke’s one meaningful contribution. He glanced at her. “Have you experienced many power outages?”

She froze, her hands in the cool water, rinsing the plates off. “Uh. Yes,” she responded after a beat. She looked over at him, giving him a tight smile. “Canadian winters, yeah?” The lightness returned to her tone, but there was a guardedness in her eyes that made him curious. It seemed as though the more she revealed by word or action, the more she attempted to cloister. She was so intriguing; a true mystery.

 _You have no time for fucking mysteries_ , he reprimanded himself, sharply. _You have a life to get back in order. The only_ mystery _is how the hell you’re going to do it._

He cleared his throat. “You live near here?”

“No.” She looked around for the errant wash cloth. He snatched it up quickly and took the plate out of her hands to dry for her as she rinsed the other.

It was then that the domesticity of it all struck him and, in his mind’s-eye, he could see himself as a young boy, still sitting at the table – which had seemed bigger in those days – watching his parents do this very thing. Leia would wash and Han would dry and usually hips would be bumping into one another, his mother’s giggle echoing in the small room amidst Han’s low chortle, a murmur for her ears only as they spoke a language through word and action that was for them and them alone. Of course at the time, he’d regarded them with disdain and mild disgust. But there had also been security there; a sense of rightness and a fulfillment he’d rarely found again as life went on.

He got lost in the past for a brief moment, the images playing out before his eyes like a movie, before he snapped himself out of it and redirected his attention back to the conversation he’d initiated.

He looked carefully at Rey. She’d turned off the water and was drying her hands on her sweatpants. Her eyes were drooping and she hadn’t stopped sniffling since dinner – although clearly her appetite hadn’t suffered, she didn’t appear to be feeling _well_ , per se. He resisted the urge to put a hand to her forehead, wondering where such an urge had even come from.

“Where _do_ you live?” he asked, taking her elbow between his thumb and forefinger gingerly, and steering her out of the kitchen towards the direction of the family room, where his luxuriant, roaring fire ( _was he preening? He was preening._ ) continued to warm the living space. He gestured towards the couch and she sat down gratefully, grabbing the ratty blanket that had been draped over the cushions and wrapping it around herself. It looked like it smelled, but Ben wasn’t about to say anything. Instead, he went back to the dinner table, refilled their wine glasses, and went to join her on the couch.

 _Nice_ , he admonished himself as he settled across from her, making sure to maintain a respectable distance. _Definitely get the sick girl drunk, you creep._

“You don’t have to drink that,” he said hastily, finding it difficult to ignore the acidic voice in his head that had pestered him his whole life. “If you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine,” she responded, rubbing her nose with the – likely fetid – blanket. “I like it.”

“Yeah, it’s a good—” _Say something nice_. “—year.”

She shrugged, taking a languid sip, her eyes drooping. “I just grabbed whatever was cheapest. Nice to be able to get wine at the grocery store now.”

“What’s that?” He regarded her quizzically. “Where else do you get wine?”

“Oh.” She waved her hand. “Liquor Control Board—it’s—Ontario is weird,” she finished off, by way of explanation. “It used to be you could only buy booze at one store, but they’re changing that now.”

“Hmm,” he responded, thoughtfully. “That is weird. And inconvenient.”

“Well, there’s literally an LCBO on every corner, but—yeah.” She laughed. “Took some getting used to.”

“So, you’re from—?” he altered his earlier question slightly, still curious even as he tried to convince himself not to be.

“I’m living in Toronto right now,” was her response.

“Ah, yes. The popular British town of Toronto.”

She gave him a withering stare. “By way of Essex.”

“Oh, an Essex girl,” he replied offhandedly, as if the location meant anything to him at all.

“ _Don’t_ call me that,” was her sharp and unexpected response.

He was taken aback. He hadn’t meant anything by it, aside from the literal - “girl from the town of Essex” – but it was obviously a sore spot. He felt genuinely chagrined, as though he’d made an irreparable mistake or offended her somehow, and it caused his chest to tighten.  

“Alright,” he muttered, taking a sip of wine to ease the sudden dryness in his throat.

She let out a deep sigh. “Sorry. It’s just—that term means something a bit different back there. A lot of what I’ve done in my life has been to escape any—stereotypes.” She shrugged, appearing eager to move past the topic of her home country. “I came to Canada when I was sixteen in a—sort of an exchange program. And I just stayed.” She took another sip of wine and remained silent.

“You just decided to...stay?” He tried to make sense of what she was telling him. “But an exchange program by definition would mean—”

“It wasn’t—precisely—” She appeared flustered. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”

“I asked,” he pointed out, trying not to pressure her, but so inexplicably interested in her responses.

“Yes, but—we’ve hardly just met.” She shook her head. “It’s ludicrous to be sharing this sort of thing with a stranger.”

“The way I see it,” he responded, almost conspiratorially, “is that it is the _best_ idea to share this sort of thing with a stranger. Get whatever you want off your chest to an objective sounding board that knows nothing about you or the people you know—” He thought of Luke and scowled. “—for the most part, and thus, won’t care to judge you.” _Is it obvious that I want to know everything about you? Sorry._

She eyed him skeptically. “Fuck it,” she said eventually, draining her wine glass. “I left the UK in a high school international ‘homestay’ program. At sixteen. After being in the foster care system in the UK for about ten years.” She cocked her head and gave him a tight smile. “And just needing to put a fuckin’ ocean between myself and England!” she finished, with a sarcastic hand flourish.

He had to visibly hide his shock. _Ten years? Sixteen?_ “So you were six when your parents—”

“Disappeared? Died? Flew to Mexico?” She shrugged. “Yeah, we basically don’t know, but I was six when I entered foster care, yes.”

“But how did—you—?”

“Manage? Not very well, being six and all. Although I’d had some experience managing on my own at that point already – the thing about unreliable drunkards is that that sort of thing doesn’t happen overnight, does it?” Her refined accent had slipped a bit and he noticed her intonation changing – consonants getting looser, vowels heavier. “I had a teacher who pieced it together and called NSPCC and the rest is history, as they say.”

He was flummoxed and enraged by her story and, despite his bravado on the subject of divulging secrets to strangers and his proclamations of objectivity, he found himself really feeling for her, in a way that surprised him. He was truly _angry_ at her circumstances – disappointed in a system that had failed her (ten years in foster care, _really_?) and feeling pained for the girl, no more than a child, really, who needed a change so badly that she flew across the world to start anew in a completely foreign place.

“How were the people you fostered with once you came to Canada? Do you still keep in touch with them?” He found himself hoping that she’d received care and kindness here, at least.

She let out a short laugh and his hopes plummeted. “The Plutts? Uh, no. I don’t even know who gave them accreditation to participate in the program. Just goes to show that nobody actually gives a shit what happens to sixteen-year-old orphans. The UK was basically like ‘see ya later’ and sent me off to these—” She pursed her lips and shook her head, exhaling sharply from her nose. “I mean, they could have been worse, fine. General, careless neglect isn’t the most horrible form of abuse one can endure, especially as a self–sufficient teenager. Let’s just say, they made a few bucks off ‘a me through the program and could hardly bring themselves to actually spend a dime of it _on_ me.” He thought of the half portions of orange cheese powder and felt the rage continue to build up inside of him. “Then, when I became a legal adult and finished high school, I fucked off right out of there and, instead of going back to England, I got a student visa, and then a work visa, and now I’m working on becoming a permanent resident.”

Pausing, she glared at her wine glass. “It’s _your_ fault I’m talking so much,” she informed it.

He reached a hand out to her. She shifted her narrowed gaze from her wine glass to his outstretched hand. Her eyes widened and she lifted her eyes to his.

“The glass,” he said gruffly after a beat, forgetting for a moment why, exactly, he’d had his hand out in the first place when her soft, brown – hazel? Brownish-hazel? It was difficult to tell in the firelight – eyes met his. “You look like shit. Maybe I can dig up some tea.”

“Stop,” she deadpanned. “I’m swooning.”

He had to bite his lip, lest she – heaven forbid – see his impromptu grin at her sass. “Seriously, your nose is all red, your voice has gotten—” He made vague gestures with his hand to his throat. “You should probably get some sleep.” He wagged his fingers at her impatiently and she handed over her wine glass. Accepting it, he stood and stretched. “I’ll even let you sleep on this couch. Imagine the luxury.”

“Sounds glorious.”

He deposited their glasses in the sink and poked around the cupboards to see if she’d bought any tea. He found an unopened box of orange pekoe and dug out the old kettle. As the water boiled, he considered her circumstances as they’d been laid out to him.

“So, now what do you do?” he called out from the kitchen, unable to wait for the culmination of her story.

“Come again?” Her voice, decidedly hoarser, came from somewhere underneath that dog blanket in the other room.

“Your job. You said work visa—”

“Oh!” Her voice brightened considerably and he looked over to see she’d sat up. “I’m an intermediate teacher.”

“So, like, middle school?” He tried to picture her as his grade seven or eight teacher. Though she was fairly tall, she was quite slim and delicate-looking. _Those kids must eat her alive._ He glanced at her again, thinking of the life she’d led and the steps she’d taken to get to that point. Thinking of how she’d stood up to him when he first burst into the cabin.  

 _Then again_ , he conceded, _maybe not._

“Yes, but—” She hesitated. “They’re not, like, regular-stream kids.” Away from the wine and the emotions of her past, her voice reverted back to the same lilting accent she’d had when he first met her.

“What do you mean?” The kettle boiled and he transferred the hot water into her mug, pouring one for himself, too. _When in England_. “How do you take this?”

“Black. Uh, well, I teach in a Section Twenty-Three school. That’s how I know your uncle – he’s the counsellor, psychologist, and resource teacher at the school.” Her lip quirked wryly. “Gotta love those school board budgets.”

 _Of course_. He’d almost forgotten the connection to his uncle. Educator, child psychologist, author, and – evidentally – mentor extraordinaire.

Ben had had firsthand experience with his teachings – after all, how else could he have been used as an example (name changed, usually) in whatever buzzword book title he’d written that decade: _How to Raise Your Stubborn Toddler_ , then _How to Communicate with a Spirited Child_ when “stubborn” became less P.C., _How to Relate to Your Spirited Adolescent_ as Ben got older, _How to Raise a Spirited Child in the Digital Age_ for those twenty-first century parents throwing iPads at their toddlers, once Ben had aged out of guinea pig status—

And those were _nothing_ compared to the books his _mother_ had written.

While Luke’s books were meant for general public consumption, full of anecdotes and illustrations and lists – _god_ , the fucking lists – Leia’s were tomes. The textbooks that the wannabe child psychologists and teachers and counsellors and mentors read while they were in university, receiving an education to work in those fields.

Ben, growing up in a family of writers and shrinks, resented the hell out of how often his antics were used for fodder for the family business. So, as soon as he’d gotten old enough, he went and did them one better—

Shaking his head to clear it of his intrusive thoughts, he carried the mugs of tea back to the couch and tried to get his mind back on track. _What did she say? Section Twenty-Three?_ “What does Section Twenty-Three mean?”

“So—thank you,” she interrupted herself as she accepted her cup from him. “So, basically it can be lots of different things, depending on what program you’re in and where you teach. Essentially it’s for students who cannot, for a multitude of reasons, be in a regular-stream school. My school, specifically, deals with kids twelve- to fifteen-years-old who are unable to learn in a traditional classroom.

"Could be because they have a tendency to withdraw socially, academically, what have you, or they exhibit issues with aggression or self-injury—” He glanced up at her in surprise, suddenly and inexplicably concerned with the idea of a fifteen-year-old showing aggression towards her, “and all these behaviours affect their adjustment at home, at school, and so on. I teach Art and English,” she finished, proudly, taking a tentative sip of her hot tea. “ _God_ , that’s good. I did need this.” She hummed happily over the rim of her cup, taking another sip.

He watched, mesmerized, as her lips pursed, blowing the steam off the top of the liquid. Wet and pink, her tongue peeking out just slightly as she went to take her third sip. He actually had to _adjust_ himself slightly, hopefully subtly, as he watched her.

 _Get a_ fucking _grip,_ he reprimanded his pig brain.

But he couldn’t.

Sitting there, gazing at her, cheeks rosy from the tea ( _and probably a fever, you pervert_ ), lips puckered over her mug, a glow in her eyes from talking about a job that was clearly her passion ( _and also: fever_ , he reminded himself acerbically), he found himself enthralled – he wanted to know everything about her. Wanted to hear more about her job, her students.

And he wanted to tell her about himself, wanted to tell her what a monstrous fuck up _he_ was, despite all the success that had been handed to him on a silver platter. Wanted to tell her how, in another life, he could have _been_ one of those students of hers, the ones who were emotionally disturbed, withdrawn, didn’t fit in.

Something about her role with kids like that – _like him_ – tugged at him in a visceral way.

 _This is dangerous_ , he thought. He looked at her, hair mussed and curling at the temples from the steam, glowing almost red in the firelight as she dimpled at him over her mug.

 _Very_ dangerous.

* * *

Rey waited for Ben to say something – anything – after she’d rambled on and on about her job and her life and eventually her bank account information and Social Insurance Number, too, probably.

 _Likely bored him to tears with all your blabbering tonight, you git_ , she rebuked herself. _A glass and a half of wine and you lose your bloody head._ She paused, then re–counted. _Okay, three glasses._ Her headache was coming back with a vengeance – the wine appeared to have soothed it momentarily – and with the “Essex” echoing in the voice she heard in her head, it took all she had not to succumb to the full body shudder that threatened to overtake her. If she never heard another Essex accent in her _sodding_ life—

He still said nothing, just looked at her with those dark eyes, molten and warm, running them over her face – did they touch on her lips, or was that just her imagination? – and she became nervous at what he must be thinking.

“Why aren’t you with family for Christmas?” she blurted out. Anything to cut the tension. _Even if it means creating more tension_ , she thought, with an internal groan. “Why did you even come here?”

“Why did you?” he returned, then winced. She could _see_ his thoughts playing out on his face: _Right. Orphan._

Still, she shrugged. “I had options, I suppose. I’ve made some friends here, friends from school, from work. But it’s hard to impose on people over the holidays, no matter how close you are.” She picked absently at a loose thread on the cozy blanket in her lap, trying to displace her discomfort into a task. “My one friend, Finn, was going to be spending Christmas with his boyfriend’s family for the first time. My roommate Rose was staying for the week with her family up in Newcastle.” She shrugged again, twisting her mouth into a grimace. “And staying home by myself wasn’t—” She thought of another lonely Christmas, eating avocado toast and KD for Christmas Eve supper. Luke’s offer had been a blessing.

She looked Ben over.

 _Maybe_.

She shook her head and shrugged helplessly. “I’m done talking, I think.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”

She reached over and poked him, right in his left pectoral muscle. There was no give whatsoever. _Well, then_ . “Your turn.” She put her tea down on the worn, but lovely, wooden coffee table, beside the strewn magazines and her forgotten book, and settled back into the couch cushions, drawing the soft blanket up to her chin and tucking her knees up close to her chest. If she wiggled her toes forward just slightly, she’d be touching his thigh. She felt warm from the fire and cozy from the blanket and—weirdly, safe. Ben’s large body, radiating heat like it was its own bloody sun, sitting close to her in the small cabin, by a fire he’d built, a stranger but not – Luke’s nephew, that had to mean _something_ , right? – she couldn’t explain it, but there was almost something _right_ about it.

 _You’re delirious_ , her brain informed her.

 _Maybe so_ , she responded, her lids growing heavy.

He sighed heavily and she strained to stay awake to hear what he was about to say. “I’m not with my family on Christmas, because I don’t—speak to my family, exactly. My mother and I had a falling out almost—” He looked like he was counting and then almost as though he was surprised by what he’d deduced, “—almost a decade ago, that was made worse when my—when my father passed away.” At that point, she allowed her feet to slide, applying what she hoped was a comforting pressure onto his leg. He fiddled with the mug he held, large hands almost engulfing it entirely. “My mother’s brother – Luke,” he added, with a nod towards her, “who had always been this—this _fixture_ in my life, tried to intervene and it just—” He puffed out a breath of air. “—just made things worse. He moved away. My mom and I lost touch. My dad—” He shrugged and leaned back heavily into the back cushions of couch. “It’s just ‘point of no return’ shit now. The damage is done.”

“Never too late,” she mumbled, finding it exceedingly difficult to stay awake, as much as she wanted to. Her head throbbed and her body ached and the only thing that felt good was closing her eyes and digging her toes into this strange man’s left thigh. They were quiet for a moment and she felt her breathing get deeper as she gradually succumbed to sleep. She cracked a huge yawn. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. You need to sleep,” he said, shifting so she had more room, tugging her feet closer and then—not letting go.

“Gotta...go into the bedroom,” she protested on a murmur, snuggling deeper under the blanket.

“Forget it,” he said, softly, and she felt another tug as he pulled the bottom part down to cover her legs better. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Mmm,” she hummed and, under the warm, soft glow of a crackling fire, with the wind rattling the windowpanes, and Ben Solo’s hand tentatively resting on her feet overtop the blanket, she fell asleep.

* * *

Ben stayed in the same position for a long time.

At one point, he dug his long-forgotten phone out of his pocket to check the time – _no service, shocker_  – ignoring the multitude of missed calls, texts, and voicemail notifications he must have received on his way up, and noted with surprise that it was barely ten o’clock.

He felt like he’d been at the cabin for several hours—days, even. Not only because time moved exceedingly slowly with no cell reception, internet, or power in general, in a tiny one-bedroom cabin in the middle of a forest, but also because he felt raw in his exposure – and vice versa – to this one tiny woman, this stranger who he had only met a few hours before and yet felt as if he knew—had known, for ages.

He squeezed her foot through the layers of blanket and sock and she barely stirred, emitting a low sound, somewhere between a snuffle and a snore.

The logs in the fire popped and crackled and, as Ben watched, several embers flew out and onto the wood floor and the small, shaggy carpet underneath the coffee table his father had built. They extinguished quickly, but it immediately made him nervous. As the fire burned down, the logs became more erratic and difficult to control. They used to have a screen to put in front of the hearth, but that seemed to be gone now, _of course_.

 _Why_ would _you keep an important safety feature for the one foolproof element of heat in this godforsaken shack,_ he thought, irritated.

He had been planning on having Rey sleep on the couch by the fire while he took the floor – wouldn’t be the first time – or even the bedroom and just piled on the layers.

But now—he eyed the fire, mouth twisting as he considered his options.

It wasn’t worth the risk, he finally decided. The cabin was old – too old – and almost entirely comprised of tinder. One wrong spark and the whole thing would go up in flames before they could do a damn thing about it.

Decision made, he placed his mug on the table beside Rey’s amidst the clutter of magazines and a lone decrepit book, stood, and then stooped back down, slipping his hands beneath her body, foul blanket and all.

As he tucked her securely against his chest, hefting her slightly to allow her to settle more firmly into his arms, he felt the warm flannel as it got caught between their bodies. It had a pleasant smell, he was surprised to find – a clean scent, like fresh-cut wood and the outdoors, mixed with the heady softness of lavender and Tide that he’d smelled on her before. She was heavy, probably because she was tall, but the weight wasn’t a burden. In fact, he found she fit quite well in his arms, against him.

He carried her to the bedroom and placed her down on the bed. It took some finagling, but he managed to pull back the comforter and tuck her underneath the blanket, before moving the trunk at the base of the bed, displacing her duffel bag and trying to ignore the several pairs of clean underwear strewn on top – _was that a thong? Stop. –_ before opening the chest and pulling out three more blankets.

He brought them each up to his nose individually – musty, but with the faint trace of a clean scent, like perhaps they’d been laundered some five-odd years ago, and that was good enough. He threw two of them over her, then went back to the living room.

Changing quickly, he put on a pair of black joggers – the only pair of comfortable pants he’d brought – and a long-sleeve thermal underneath his black sweater. Going over to the coat hook, he pulled down his parka and, after a brief moment of debate, went back to the bedroom and threw it over Rey.

He spent the next twenty minutes dousing the fire using a proper – if not the _most_ efficient – method (the best he could do without baking soda), lamenting the loss of the logs and eyeing the remaining firewood critically. Afterwards, he went to the bathroom to perform his nightly ablutions. Finally, he ended up back on the couch, one thick blanket to keep him warm, and prayed that would be enough.

* * *

He woke up in pitch blackness, his heart thundering in his chest. He let out an exhale as though he’d been holding his breath and he could sense, rather than see, the puff of air encircle his face, warming his cold nose. The cabin certainly did not retain heat well – an unsurprising fact –  and he found himself shivering even under the layers he wore. As his eyes adjusted, he gained a vague sense of his surroundings, illuminated by a tepid moon shining through the large window.

Suddenly, he heard a sound – it must have been the same noise that had woken him up. A soft cry, perhaps a murmur, coming from the bedroom.

In half a second, he was on his feet and, a few more half seconds later, in the room.

Rey had kicked off all the blankets and was tossing and turning in the bed, almost violently. He could see her shivering in the pale strip of moonlight coming in from the small, uncovered window.

“Rey,” he called softly, going over to her. He gave in to his earlier impulse to touch her forehead and almost withdrew his hand immediately. She was warm – too warm. “Rey.” He shook her lightly on her shoulder and she whimpered.

“So cold,” she muttered, her teeth chattering. “So bloody cold.”

“Rey, you’re burning up,” he whispered urgently. “Did you bring any medicine? Advil? Tylenol?” He kneeled in front of the bed to get a better look at her. Her eyes were screwed shut, nose red, her entire body tense and shaking. She didn’t respond and he put his hand on her arm, steadying her. “Rey, medicine?”

“Hmm?” she moaned. “No, no.”

He didn’t know if she was answering him or if she was delirious and didn’t even know he was there. For the first time in a long time, he felt the icy fingers of panic slide into his body through his bloodstream, squeezing around his heart. Just as he was about to stand up and put his boots on to wade through the snow and storm until he got a service bar to call an ambulance with, she put her hand out and grasped his, cracking her eyes open slightly.

“Water,” she croaked.

He tripped over his feet as he hastily stood up and he made it to the kitchen and back in approximately thirty seconds.

“Here,” he whispered, putting his arm behind her back and helping her sit up slightly to drink. “Slowly,” he added, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Not—” She wet her lips with her tongue and he leaned in closer to hear her. “Not—well.”

“I know,” he said, his voice almost reminiscent of a croon. “You don’t feel well; I know.”

“No.” She shook her head, eyes closed again. “Not—well. The water.”

 _Huh? The water not well—ohhh._ “No, it’s bottled water, not from the tap. Not well water,” he confirmed, letting out a relieved exhale that could almost be considered a laugh; at least she appeared to have her wits about her.

She nodded and lay back down heavily on a deep sigh.

“Let me just—” He lifted the covers around her again, tucking her in more securely. As he went to move back, her hand shot out once more, and grasped his arm again with a surprisingly powerful grip.

“Stay,” she pleaded, shaking his arm slightly. “So...bloody cold. You must be...too.” She hummed slightly and her breathing deepened for a moment before she shook herself awake again. _Poor thing_. The thought came unbidden and he tried to refocus on her words. “Body heat,” she rasped. “Won’t get you sick… promise.”

Again, he almost laughed, but it died in his throat as he realized what she was saying. She wanted him...to climb into the bed with her?

“You only just met me,” was his dumbfounded response.

“Prude,” was her return mumble.

He deliberated for another second. “Are you...sure?” he asked finally, not sure himself if this was actually a good idea or not.

“Don’t be...stupid.” Her teeth were chattering again. “You’re no...good to me...if you’re dead.” She patted the air around him and he was unsure if she were reaching for him or not, but he grasped her hand in his own anyway. She still felt warm, though her hand trembled. “Who will build...fire?”

“Fine,” he said, amusement and something else roiling in his chest. “If only to preserve the art of fire-building in this cabin.”

Tentatively, he crawled under the covers beside her and, after a moment, drew her against him.

She sighed, happily and heavily, and settled further into the alcove his body provided. Her round bottom nestled deeply into his lap and gave a firm little wiggle as her breathing evened.

Ben placed his hand resolutely on her hip as she wiggled again. In response, she tucked her head under his chin and she drew that hand across her body, cradling it to her chest.

“Poor burnt fingers,” she mumbled, surprising him; he’d already thought she’d fallen asleep. Then, to his further astonishment, she brought his hand up and softly pressed her lips to the tips of his pointer and middle finger.

If she had reared up and slapped him in the face, he wouldn’t have been more shocked.

After she kissed him, she tucked his hand under her chin, holding it between her own, smaller hands against her chest, and immediately fell asleep, her deep breathing and soft snores the only sound in the still twilight.

A beat passed in stunned silence, before he let out a disbelieving laugh into the cold midnight air.

It was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You guys seemed to like these, so:_
> 
> How did Ben make his impressive, long–lasting [upside–down fire](https://www.fatherly.com/play/how-make-fireplace-fires-burn-hours/)?
> 
> Imagine I actually checked to see if there was a [Panera Bread off the highway driving through Watertown, NY](https://locations.panerabread.com/ny/watertown/21872-towne-center%E2%80%93drive.html)?
> 
> What the heck is a [solar-powered water pump](https://www.civicsolar.com/support/installer/articles/solar-powered-water-pumping)?
> 
> Where, exactly, do Ontarians [buy their booze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor_Control_Board_of_Ontario)? 
> 
> Why doesn't Rey like being called an ["Essex girl"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_girl)?
> 
> How can someone [host an international student](http://youthedservices.ca/host-a-student/)? (And I'm sure they're more discerning than I implied in the story.)
> 
> How would Rey be able to go to school and work [in Canada](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=495&top=15)? 
> 
> What are next steps for people [who want to stay](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/study-canada/work/after-graduation.html)?
> 
> [Who](https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-you-can-do/report-abuse/) did Rey's teacher (most likely) call when she suspected abuse/neglect? 
> 
> What is a [Section 23 school](https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Leadership-Learning-And-Special-Education/Special-Education/Section23)?
> 
> Lastly, here's how to properly [put out a fire](https://www.hunker.com/12162324/how-to-put-out-a-fire-in-a-fireplace) in a fireplace.


	4. kylo ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't want to start every chapter apologizing about how long it took me to get to this chapter, but damn, girl, damn. I'm hoping the updates will come quicker from now on and that's all I'll say on the matter.
> 
> Thank you to those of you who are still sticking around for this Christmas tale (in February...). Your comments and your kudos brighten my days and making a fun experience that much more joyful.
> 
> Special thanks to (you guessed it) [raven–maiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_maiden/works) for her incomparable beta–ing (I print off her comments and post them around my room as positive affirmations when I'm feeling crappy) and to [slipgoingunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder) for listening to me say, "But is it lame?" about 87 septillion times and still being kind and gracious and helpful in so many ways. They both have amazing fics in the works right now that you HAVE to read. Go there now, then come back. 
> 
> You also might have noticed the chapter count increased from 5 to 7, because I'm a wordy bitch and you knew that when you were getting into this. Next chapter: Christmas Eve!
> 
> Small TW: Mention of cancer.

* * *

Rey was in hell and no one was going to be able to convince her otherwise.

How else could she possibly explain the inferno consuming her body from the inside out? Or the bright red light piercing her retinas through her eyelids? One of the demons had even pinned her down from behind, pressing her body into the hard, lumpy ground, poking her with one of his pitchfor—

Oh.  _Oh_.

Rey’s eyes shot open.

The bright sunlight, coming in from the small window in the room, was immediately and searingly painful. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut again with a gasp, feeling the sharp pain in her head subside into a duller ache.

“Are you okay?” a groggy voice murmured in her ear as arms tightened around her. She was pulled even closer, impossibly closer, to a warm, rock solid body, with certain—protrusions digging more evidently into her bottom. “Rey?”

It was almost as though saying her name triggered an alarm in his head, because she felt his body stiffen (his  _whole_  body this time, not just one—particular—) and he quickly detached from her, putting enough distance between them that she could feel the cool air brushing down her spine.

“Uh—” He cleared his throat. Twice. And then sat up quickly. She felt him pause, likely taking inventory of their circumstances and whether or not she was awake. Taking pity on him in his uncertainty, she cracked an eye open and turned her head ever so slightly to look at him. His face sank, before he scrubbed it roughly with his hands.  

“Sorry.” His jaw worked and she could tell he was warring with himself on what to say next. “It’s just—a morning thing—”  _Oh god, he went there._

“You don’t have to explain male anatomy to me,” she croaked, closing her eye again as the effort became too much. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine, though.

 _Not_  because of his morning wood—she didn’t give a shit about that. Not at the moment, at least, feeling the way she felt.

Although—

Although, if she  _allowed_  herself to dwell on it, for just a second, her thoughts might have settled on the way it fit – quite snugly, actually – between her asscheeks. The feel of his heat (and length and, good god, girth) through the thin sweatpants she wore. If she took just a second to reflect, she’d focus on the tingle between her legs that hadn’t yet subsided.

But there was no time for such contemplations.

No, things weren’t fine, because she felt like garbage warmed over. Like a truck had run her down and then backed up to finish the job. The only tingle she could focus on was her beleaguered nerve-endings, valiantly fighting against the raging fever coursing through her body. A head-cracking migraine. And, the piece de resistance, her incessantly runny nose.

 _Remember how, once – god, feels like eons ago, now – you were able to breathe?_  she thought, in fond reminiscence.

“Can I get you anything?” His voice intruded into her foggy psyche, cutting through her self-pitying reverie. “Do you think you have Tylenol or Advil anywhere?”

 _Tylenol._ Had she really been that wise? Had that much foresight?

“Bag,” she rasped. “Maybe.”

She felt him move the sheets and blankets away from himself. They both hissed at the cool air that hit them when he pushed back the layers of blankets.

Another vague, foggy memory emerged: awakening in the night to him holding her, while she felt like the pea under a hundred mattresses in a fairy tale, reflecting on how they’d gotten there—

He climbed over her – the only way out of the bed, since the other side was placed so closely to the wall. Once he was out, he made it a point to tuck her back in snugly (which made her heart beat a certain way for just a moment) while cursing in the frigid air.

“Jesus— _fuck_ —” He hissed out a breath and she could hear him rubbing his hands together, before he shifted towards her bag at the foot of the bed. She heard him rustling around for a minute.

“Don’t touch...underwear,” she muttered, face and body buried once more.  _Priorities._

“I’ll try and resist,” was his dry comeback. “A-ha.” She heard the telltale rattle of a pill bottle. “I found some.” He went back to the side of the bed, grabbing at a water bottle on a bedside table that she hadn’t realized was there (the water or the table). “Here.” There was a long moment of silence, where Rey realized he was waiting for her to move – to sit up, to take the pills from his hand, anything.

“Oh,” she muttered to herself, making an effort to sit up. And failing. Making an additional effort, then being met with less success than before. “Mmph.” She groaned miserably, as she flopped back down.

“Here—” An exasperated voice preceded the feel of his arm, the arm she’d become well-acquainted with through the night, burrowing beneath her back and – slowly, steadily – lifting her until she was semi-upright. Once she was in something resembling a seated position, he took one of the blankets off the bed and threw it over her back. She gratefully pulled it more snugly around her shivering body. The strange dissonance of somehow being cold  _and_  hot simultaneously was enervating.

“Alright, alright,” she muttered at no one and nothing.

She braced her hands on the bed to scoot her bottom back. Once she hit the headboard, she leaned forward, allowing her forehead to touch her knees, and let out a loud, lusty groan.

“I’m dying,” she moaned dramatically and, she believed, accurately.

“Finally,” he deadpanned, “the place to myself.” He nudged her gently. “Hold out your hand. And hurry. It’s fucking freezing, I want to start the fire.”

Head still on knees, she did as he directed. He placed two pills in her hand. With great effort, she lifted the bowling ball resting at the top of her neck to pop them in her mouth. Then, he gave her the water bottle and she drank from that, too, before handing it back to him and burying herself under the covers once more. The blanket he covered her with got stuck under her body as she was lying back down and she tugged it free.

With one eye open, she examined it and realized it was actually his very expensive parka.

 _This is important!_  her coherent brain screamed at her, somewhere within the depths of her psyche.

 _Sleep_ , her fever brain responded, not unlike the way a zombie might moan about brains.

“—Only regular-strength, not cold and flu or anything, but they should help take the edge off a bit.”

He’d been speaking and she only just clued in at the end as he bustled around the room, changing his sweater (— _and his pants? Open, blasted eyes, open god damn it!_ ) “You go back to sleep. I’ll start the fire and see if I can scrounge us up something for breakfast that isn’t bright orange.”

 _Thank you_ , she thought, gratefully, ignoring the dig at her pasta preferences, as he carried on for a few more minutes, muttering curses to himself about the cold floors and cold air and cold everything.  _For all of it._

She’d fallen back asleep before she could say it out loud.

* * *

When she blinked awake again, the sun was no longer glaring through the uncovered window in the bedroom and the chill of the room had lost its edge. The smell of something sweet permeated the small space.

Her headache appeared to have abated slightly, though her body still felt achey, her throat sore, and her sinuses protesting their very existence. Still, it wasn’t as much of a struggle to worm her way out from under the covers, sit up on her own, and stretch her aching limbs. She rubbed her sore eyes and her beleaguered nose. Then looked down.

The sweater she had worn to bed had been the one she’d put on shortly after she’d arrived at the cabin: an old, grey Roots hoodie that she’d had since she was a teenager and was about two sizes too big.

At the moment, however, she was wearing a plain back t-shirt – also ludicrously big.

While she, admittedly, had a propensity for clothes that didn’t fit properly she knew for a fact that she hadn’t brought any oversized black tees with her.

Her brain chugged along slowly, but surely, to one inevitable conclusion.

 _He’d fucking changed her_.

At some point, during the night, Ben Solo had taken her clothes off and – she quickly brought both hands up to her breasts and let out a soft gasp –  _and she’d been bra-less_  (because who wears a bra when they think they’re going to be alone for a week?) She had absolutely zero recollection of any of it, though the majority of the night was a strange blur of half-lucid fever dreams, leaving her unsure of what was reality and what was not. She wasn’t even sure how he’d come to lie in the bed with her, though there was enough of an assurance to his actions – and her attitude surrounding them – that she knew in her bones it hadn’t been a decision he’d made lightly. It likely hadn’t even been a decision he’d made for himself.

 _You_ are _an Essex girl,_  she thought bitterly, crossing her arms over her chest as the coldness settled more deeply into her fevered bones. Looking around the room, her eye caught on her Roots sweater on the floor. Dragging herself from the bed, she lifted it up and, even through the thickness of the sweater, could feel a lingering dampness inside.  _Jesus_.  _Gross_. She’d sweated through the thing, then. She lifted his tee up to her nose and gave it a smell. It was clean, fresh, with a hint of some sort of cologne – something citrusy and aromatic, almost like a lemon Earl Grey tea. There was a comfort to it that she tried not to think about too much.

So. At least she hadn’t stunk up his shirt. Though, now that the fever had faded slightly and she had her wits about her a bit more, she felt grimy and rank in her own skin, that lingering, grungy feeling of profuse sweat and a full twenty-four hours without a shower. She needed to bathe and she only prayed it was possible in their current power-less state.

Ben had mentioned something about a solar-powered pump. Did it extend to hot water? Though, truly, she’d take anything at this point even if it meant freezing her tits off for a quick sponge bath.

Speaking of—

Her nipples were fully standing at attention now beneath the t-shirt she wore and goosebumps had risen on the exposed parts of her skin. She needed another sweater. Her stomach grumbled as the smell of breakfast wafted to her nose once more.

And food. Sweater and food, in that order. Gingerly she reached up and touched her hair.

...But maybe first a shower.

* * *

Ben poured the pancake batter into a buttered pan and watched as it sizzled once it hit the hot surface. Releasing a breath as the pancake cooked, he raked his hands through his hair. He felt agitated, like all the major parts of him had been pulled off and put back together slightly askew.  

Had he really been there – known Rey – for less than twenty-four hours?

He thought of the turn his life had taken in just over a day, from the disaster at the Barnes and Noble in Midtown Manhattan to cooking pancakes in his grandfather’s cabin in the Canadian wilderness, with no power, after a night spent sharing a bed with a sick stranger.

It was odd, the feeling that arose in him from her dependency. It had been so very long since anyone had actually  _needed_  him for anything. Sure, he’d had obligations. Certain requirements or expectations. But last night, she had asked him to stay and pulled him in towards her. Kissed his fingers and tucked them under her chin. And had fallen asleep in his arms like it was exactly the place she wanted to be in that moment.

When she’d awoken in the night, sweating, feverish, and panicked, barely lucid, he’d done whatever he could to make her comfortable and get her resettled and asleep. He’d stayed awake. He’d  _worried_.

 _When was the last time he’d_ worried?

He flipped the pancake, allowing the other side to cook. Poured a small amount of batter in the empty space beside it. Chewed his thumb nail.

 _At least she has the Tylenol in her system now_ , he thought absently, transferring the pancake onto a plate and pouring out another. The pan sizzled.  _What else brings down a fever?_

He considered telling her to take a lukewarm shower, though he wasn’t sure what the state of the water would be with the power out. They had the solar powered pump and he knew there was some sort of internal heater, but it was freezing outside and it had been awhile since it’d been used, he was sure. He didn’t know how much she’d appreciate an icy shower, though it might benefit her fever slightly.

 _What are you, a fucking doctor now?_  he asked himself caustically.  _Twelve hours ago, you would’ve booted this girl out into the snow. Now you give a shit about her temperature?_

The irony was not lost on him.

( _Never say a Solo wasn’t a fool for_ —)

The unmistakable sound of pipes chugging and groaning to life thankfully interrupted his reverie. Clearly she’d had a similar idea to his.

The bathroom was only kiddie corner from the kitchen. All he had to do was poke his head past the cabinets and into the hall. Maybe ask her if she needed a hand ( _with the hot water, damn it, the water_!)

He smothered a sigh and resisted the impulse. Flip. Pour. Sizzle.

About four minutes and another two pancakes had past when he heard fluent cursing come from the small room.

He stayed put, but paused and tilted his head, straining to hear what she was saying.

“Rey?” he called out tentatively, after a moment.

The only reason he knew she’d heard him was because there was a pause in the stream of invective. He waited. Silence.

“You okay?” he tried again.

“Yes!” came the immediate response. “Just fine, thank you.”

 _Fine, then_. He’d leave her to it.

He finished making a few more pancakes in quick succession and plated them, before filling the kettle and setting it on the lit burner that his pancake pan had just vacated. He wished there was coffee. Smothering a sigh, he got the tea bags in the mugs and then stood and stared at his hands, braced against the countertop.

They were fine hands, he supposed. Got in his way sometimes. Fingers that were too large for simple tasks, like sending a text message or dialing a phone number without pressing two buttons at once. His laptop was bigger than what he would have wanted, but it was necessary so that he could have the surface area to tap away at the keyboard without the Word Document acting as though he’d mashed his palm into several keys at once. But they had served him well, these past few—no, more than a few. Ten years. These past ten years. They’d brought him quite a bit of success. Success beyond the shattered legacy that had been left for him. Success of his own making.

His thoughts trailed back to his laptop. As he continued to stare down at his hands, his fingers twitched, just a bit.  

As far as he knew, the laptop still sat in the bottom of his duffle bag. He hadn’t had the inclination to write in months. The fervour he’d once felt had dwindled to nothing but a smoking ember, all but extinguished. The culmination of which led to his – admittedly unprofessional – meltdown the other day. He thought about the missed calls on his now-dead phone and let out a heavy sigh.

It was all well and fine, hiding away in the cabin over Christmas, a time where the world seemed to slow down for everyone; this mutual agreement within regular society, whether one celebrated or not, to put off answering those emails or showing up at the office or giving explanations about your extremely public meltdowns to your long suffering literary agents and publishers. But soon, he was going to need to answer for himself. Soon, he was going to need to provide proof that he was still worth it – his previous content, the current wait, the future promises – all of it.

The kettle whistled and he snapped out of his reverie, removing it from the burner and clicking off the stove. He paused, debating whether he should call Rey again or just wait. Listening for a moment, he realized the water had turned off. Had she remembered to take a towel? The back of the cabin, though small as it was, probably hadn’t warmed up fully yet. What if she was stuck in there without a towel, too embarrassed to call him for one? What if she was cold?

He took a step, as though making to leave the kitchen, then took a step back. Another step forward. Then a step back. He was torn. Should he go? Should he not?

“...Ben?” her voice called out unsteadily.

He was out of the kitchen before the echo of his name had faded from the air.

He was greeted by the sight of her sitting on the cold tile floor, wrapped in a large grey towel that covered her torso and legs and looked like it had seen better days, her hair soaking wet and dripping down her back and onto the floor, head hanging and hands braced on the tiles with her legs tucked under her. His shins hit the ground before he realized what he was doing and he reached out towards her.

“Hey, you okay? What’s going on?” His hand stopped millimetres from her damp arm, hovering awkwardly in the air.

“I got dizzy,” she mumbled, bringing her hand to her forehead.

He shifted and gently pulled her hand from her face. She looked up at him, teary and miserable, her cute, pert nose a fiery red, her eyes red-rimmed with dark circles underneath. She looked pale, the smattering of freckles on her cheeks standing out in stark contrast to the pallidness of her complexion.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, able to keep his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Did you slip?” He surreptitiously tried to glance down at her long legs peeking out from beneath the towel, checking for bruising.

“No,” she sniffled. “The water was too c-cold—” He noted for the first time that she was shivering and he glanced around for another towel, a sweater, something. “—and I didn’t know how to fix it, so I thought I’d just be really quick about it, but then I got  _really_  cold and when I stepped out to grab my towel, my eyesight went all fuzzy and I just—” She sniffled again and shrugged. “—had to sit down. And then couldn’t get back up.”

She looked up at him again just as he was picking up his discarded black tee off the floor and throwing it over her bare shoulders. He swallowed the breath that he had taken in too quickly, the green in her eyes seizing him into a motionless stupor for the briefest of moments.

“Can you...help me?”

Her words abruptly brought him back to the reality of the situation.

“Of course,” he said quickly, grasping her by the arm and bringing it around to drape over his shoulder. He briefly considered lifting her right into his arms ( _thank you, misguided hero-complex_ ) but he quashed the idea – she would protest vehemently, he was sure, not to mention he wasn’t certain they would even fit through the narrow doorway. Plus, her towel was already hanging on by a prayer ( _hers_ ). Instead, his hand went around her waist, gravitating a bit too high at first, before he brought it down swiftly upon realization. The motion loosened the towel from her chest and she grasped it quickly before it could fall down completely. He swallowed hard and desperately avoided looking down.  

“Not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, eh?” she commented wryly, as they stumbled out of the bathroom, her arm braced on his shoulder, leaning heavily into his side, with him half-dragging her along.

He let out a half laugh, a huff of agreement, when her words processed. “Ye—wait, what?”

He’d brought her into the bedroom and directed her to the edge of the bed. Her shivers had grown violent as her body acclimated to the temperature inside the room. She sat down and he automatically began rummaging through her bag for warm clothes.

“Last n-night,” she said, teeth chattering. “When I w-woke up this morning I was wearing a t-shirt that d-doesn’t belong to me.” She looked down and touched the black tee on her shoulders. “Th-this one.” She leveled him with an accusatory stare. “And no bra.”

“I didn’t take off your bra!” was his automatic defence.

“No, but I wasn’t wearing one anyway, s-so when you switched my top, you must have seen all the g-goods.”

This was an  _injustice_ , as he had not, in fact, seen any “goods”.

“Rey.” Now it was his turn to level her with his own stare. “It was pitch black. You were drenched in sweat and speaking in tongues. I literally took your sweater off and put my own t-shirt over you. I didn’t see anything, I didn’t feel anything. I even tried to get your consent to do it, but you weren’t exactly lucid.” He realized how bad that sounded as he said it. “I mean—”

“Fine,” she sighed, closing her eyes and visibly drooping. “It’s f-fine. I’m just…tired. And a bit hungry. And c-cold.”

As she spoke, he passed her a clean sweater, her own t-shirt, a fresh pair of joggers, and socks from her bag. She accepted it all gratefully.

“Er, you’ll have to grab—” He motioned vaguely to the bag. “Anything else you need.”

“Thank you,” she said in a dignified tone. “I will do that.” Then, she looked at him pointedly.

He stared back at her.

She cleared her throat and tilted her head towards the door.

“Oh! Right. Er, I’ll just—yeah.” He turned and shoved his hands in his pockets, making for the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”

She said nothing, just busied herself with her clothes, and he valiantly tried not to think about her taking off that towel.

* * *

She emerged from the bedroom minutes later, dressed and cozy and feeling a bit more human than before. The inadvertently ice cold shower had taken a lot out of her and she was mortified to face Ben again after calling him for help leaving the bathroom. At the time, she had honestly felt like her limbs were leaden and her head was preparing for lift-off from her body, but she should have done  _something_  other than call him into the bathroom while she sat there in a towel, probably flashing her bits for all the world to see.

All her excuses, embarrassment, and apologies flew out the window when she stepped into the kitchen and saw, for the second time in just over half a day, this man had cooked a full ass meal for her.

There were pancakes stacked in a plate, the bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup beside them on the table. Two steaming hot mugs of tea sat beside two empty plates, waiting to be filled. Ben was pouring orange juice into a glass as she entered.

He looked up. “How do you feel?” The words were casual, but those honey-dark eyes bore into hers as he somehow scanned her body without tearing his gaze away.

“Fine,” she said, truthfully. “Better.” She awkwardly tucked her still-wet hair behind her ear and sat at the table.

He came over and placed the orange juice in front of her.

“Drink that, too,” he said. “It’s good enough for Vitamin C purposes, even if it is some Tropicana shit.”

“Tropicana is good,” she protested feebly, before taking a gulp. “Blech, warm.”

“Yeah.” He looked at her like she was an idiot. “Fridges don’t work without power.” He went and sat across from her, helping himself to a couple pancakes. She took that as her cue to do the same. “Your eggs and milk are basically done. I tossed everything. Garbage bags I’m just putting in the bin at the side of the house for now. We’ll deal with disposal—” He waved his fork, absently. “Later.” He side-eyed her. “Good thing you didn’t buy any fruits or vegetables.” The disapproval was clear in his tone.

“I bought bananas!” she replied, indignantly.

“Right, the bananas.” He motioned to the syrup glugging out of the container as she poured it out onto her pancakes. “And luckily you also had the wherewithal to buy the pancake mix that only needed water. And the type of syrup that doesn’t require refrigeration.” Another judgemental side-eye.

“It’s cottage living, alright?” She realized her protests were getting lame and repetitive, but she had a headache, dammit. Probably even a fever still.  _Not that you eat differently at home anyway, liar_ , her traitorous brain whispered.

 _True enough._  A common misconception people had of her (or, one that they might have had, if she’d gotten to know many people well over the years) was that she knew how to cook, since she spent almost all of her life fending for herself. The problem was, when one was required to fend for themselves from an obscenely early age, they weren’t exactly whipping up chicken cordon bleu, were they? She’d taught herself very, very basic things that would get her fed quickly and efficiently and – most importantly – cheaply. Things like baked beans on toast, mostly. Then avocado toast, once her palate became a little bit more refined, her grocery budget  _slightly_  larger, and the thought of baked beans began to carry too many weighty implications of being the Oliver Twist in the Dickensian tale of her life or, more aptly she liked to think, the Harry Potter in a rotating shuffle of Dursleys.

He simply nodded his head. “Whatever you say.”

They ate silently for a few minutes; blessedly, since her head had begun pounding again. The true test of how ill she was came about when she was only able to finish one-and-a-half pancakes in comparison to her usual three or more.

She pushed her plate away. “I’m sorry, Ben, thank you for breakfast but I can’t—”

He was already shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it, stop. It’s fine. Why don’t you go lie down by the fireplace? I’ll take care of the dishes.”

She inexplicably felt her eyes well up with tears that she quickly tried to blink away before he noticed. It had just been...a very long time since she’d had anyone take care of her.

 _Why?_ she wanted to wail at him.  _Why are you being so nice?_ But she was worried that if she voiced it, drew attention to it, that the kindness would disappear – like a spell being broken – and they would go back to being antagonistic strangers.

Still, she wasn’t a total heathen. “Let me help—”

“I said,” he interrupted her, firmly, “I got it. Go.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, though it was coloured with a tinge of relief and gratitude. “I’ll go lie down. Only because you forced me,” she added as she backed out of the kitchen.

“Noted,” he replied, his back already turned from her as he brought the dishes to the sink.

She shuffled to the couch and saw a silver MacBook on the coffee table. The dichotomy of the sleek, new technology resting on the worn, faded wood of the coffee table struck her as something both sad and beautiful, though she wasn’t sure why she even cared.

 _Probably delirious_ , she reasoned.

Next to the computer was also her dog-eared copy of  _Persuasion_  and her cell phone. She picked up the phone first and experimentally pressed a few buttons. As she suspected: dead. Hopefully her sickness didn’t get any worse before the power came back, because she didn’t know if either of them had a way to contact the outside world. She looked out the large, picture window beside the fireplace.

The forested landscape was covered with a blanket of snow. Topping the trees, covering the ground, with the sky blue and clear as far as the eye could see. Peaceful and still and so, so lovely. She moved closer to the window and leaned forward until her nose was almost pressing against the glass.

A hawk swooped above the treetops before disappearing into the woods. It emerged once or twice more and she watched its graceful arcs through the cloudless sky. Her breath fogged the window and the cool glass was a sore temptation for her flushed skin, so she gave in and rested her forehead against the icy surface.

It almost felt like it helped her headache. She kept it there for a moment, opening her eyes again and looking out into the vast wilderness, no sign of humanity – be it person or technology – anywhere. Not even a plane, soaring across the blue expanse, hundreds of kilometres away. She thought of her and Ben in that cabin as the only two people left in the entire world. Needing to repopulate, at some point, she assumed.

 _Better get busy, then_ , she thought, before a hysterical giggle escaped from her throat.

“What’s so funny?”

His voice was startlingly close to her and she jumped before whirling around to see him standing by the couch, both tea mugs in hand.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. She looked back out the window. Still clear and empty, allowing for a continuation of the illusion she’d built – last man, last woman. Sharing a home together.

 _Foolish_ , she scoffed.

Still, she hastily moved away, before anything appeared that could contradict her daydream.

* * *

“What’cha doing?”

Ben jolted slightly, looking down at the origin of the sudden sound: Rey’s head resting by his thigh. She looked back up at him, blinking sleepily, before slowly turning her head towards his laptop screen.

After breakfast she had gravitated towards the couch and picked up her book, burrowing herself into the back cushions and propping her feet up on the coffee table.

He had sat beside her and pulled out his laptop, which thankfully had had a full charge when he’d packed it and was still hovering around ninety-percent in terms of battery life. He’d get a solid couple of hours out of it. Maybe more, he’d reasoned, since he didn’t have internet as a distraction or a battery drainer.

She’d said nothing as he placed it on his knees, feet planted on the floor. Hadn’t asked questions about what he was doing or why. He’d been about to hazard a glance over at her as he pulled up his current outline, just to see if she was focused on her book or stealing her own glances over at him, when he’d heard a soft snore.

Turning to look at her fully, he’d seen her book laying unopened in her lap and her head drooped to the side, giving her a cute double chin as it rested practically on her shoulder. He’d let her be, even as her head had done a slow slide closer and closer to his shoulder.

By the time her forehead hit his bicep, he’d realized some type of intervention was necessary.

Shifting slightly, he’d moved an errant, shabby pillow to rest beside his leg and guided her head gently onto it. She’d immediately squirmed closer to him, so her hair – now in another bun – rested on his thigh. He could feel her hand, tucked under the pillow, brush against his leg.

Swallowing hard, he’d turned back to the computer screen. He’d had an outline planned for months.

The final book in the trilogy. Ten years in the making.

When she’d woken up, he’d still been reviewing his outline, making unnecessary edits here and there. Anything to delay the actual writing that needed to be done.

Now, time was up, if the sleepy hazel eyes squinting at his computer screen were any indication.  

“Are you a writer?” she asked, finally, her gaze shifting back up to him. Her voice was raspy from sleep and, presumably, illness, but otherwise she seemed lucid.

Through some unconscious desire borne from an innate inability to control himself – or perhaps simply to avoid her question – he placed his hand directly on her head to see if her fever had abated. Two-thirds of his palm covered her entire forehead, the remainder resting on her hair. She felt warm, but not burning up like the previous evening.

“How do you feel?” he asked anyway.

“Are you a writer?” she repeated, brushing his hand off her forehead, looking back at his screen. “This looks like a book. Sort of.” She didn’t let go of his hand; he tried not to think about it and focus instead on her question.

 _Was he a writer_?

He’d been writing as long as he could remember. Scribbles and notes here and there. Some poetry in his angsty, lonely teen years that had long since been destroyed. Ideas and outlines that never came to fruition.

And then, one day, an idea that did.

_Was he a writer?_

He cleared his throat as he thought of the best way to answer her question. “My...grandfather,” he began, and her head tilted in curiosity - obviously not the direction she’d expected him to go in. What direction  _was_  he going in? “The original owner of the cabin,” he continued, still unsure of the whys and hows, but knowing, in his soul, that this was a tale he wanted to share with her. “He had been many things.”

She finally let go of his hand and struggled to sit up, perhaps inherently sensing the importance of what he was about to divulge, even if he wasn’t exactly sure of the depths to which he would take her. He helped by removing the pillow and supporting her with his shoulder as she shifted upwards, until finally she was upright and sitting, her back resting on the arm of the couch, her feet digging into his leg, not unlike the previous night.

“Yes,” she urged, when he didn’t begin speaking right away. “Go on.”

He inhaled deeply through his nose. “He was…a genius.” He huffed out the breath. “And a mad man. A devoted husband, then a cruel one. Alternatingly an absentee father and an exacting one. He’d died in his old age, alone, with barely even his kids having made peace with him. My grandmother had gone many years earlier.”  _Of a broken heart_ , they’d all said. He kept the maudlin sentiment to himself. “They’d all grown up as a family, sort of – my grandparents, my mother—” He glanced at her. “—Luke. But I know that their life had been… difficult.”

When his grandfather had died, Ben had been very little. The only memories he had of that time was that it’d been fraught with emotion – his mother sad and angry in equal measure, his father incompetent at dealing with her moods and a toddler at the same time. As he got older, he’d noticed a shift in the way his mother talked about her father. Not with fondness, per se, but perhaps less disdain. Less hurt. As though she’d come to peace with who he’d been and the torment that must have consumed his own life, in order to be so tempestuous to those around him.

Then again, maybe it had been something to do with Ben himself.

“You remind me a lot of him,” she’d say, many times over the years, and he’d never had to ask who she was referring to. It was an odd statement; never a compliment, exactly, but Ben wasn’t sure how insulted he was supposed to be.

A genius, sure, but it had cost him his family.

An undiagnosed lunatic.

_Gee, thanks mom._

Rey was still watching him, waiting for him to continue, appearing enraptured and surprisingly patient considering she’d asked a very simple question and he was giving her an extremely convoluted answer.

He sighed and continued, because in for a penny, in for a pound right? “When I was a teenager, my mother gave me the journals my grandfather had kept. ‘They’ll help you to understand,’ she’d said.” He shrugged. “She was right.”

In each entry, pieced together, was the story of a man who had loved his family, his wife, had felt loyalty and fondness for a friend here. He’d desultorily moved from job to job, sometimes as an artist, sometimes a writer. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Most consistently as a pilot, who would also repair and, at times, even build planes. But in the things that brought him pleasure and triggered his passion, he was fickle at best. He wouldn’t be able to stick with a thing for too long. More than that, he always appeared to have had difficulty coming to terms with his upbringing – raised as an only child, in a poverty-stricken home, by a single mother. Never knowing his father. He also spoke frequently of a darkness inside of him, an entity he referred to as his Dark Side.

As the journals had moved from his early twenties to his early thirties, the darkness within him grew larger, stronger. So much so, that he’d given it a name:

Darth Vader.

Sometimes he wrote as himself, as Anakin. Those entries would be melancholy, but steady. The mundane comfort of a pleasant life.

Other times, increasingly frequent as he got older, the words of Darth Vader would come through. It was a fascinating look into the psyche of a tortured being. And, finally, Ben had gotten an idea that had stuck.

“The journals,” Rey prompted.

“Right.” He scratched the back of his head uncomfortably, trying to think of how to best explain to her what he had done. “So, in those journals, was basically his life story. The good and the bad. And as they continued throughout his life, they became more bad than good. He’d had this—this evilness to him almost, and the evilness was so—so prevalent, he’d given it a name.”

“What was the name?” she breathed, leaning forward, wrapping her hands around her knees, her eyes glued to him.

 _This was it. The moment of truth. No more hiding after this_. “The name—the name was…” His mouth felt dry, his throat having difficulty choking out the words. “The name was Darth Vader.”

There was a pause. She did a quick double blink.

“But that’s—” He could practically  _see_  the gears in her head turning. “But that’s—” She tilted her head and stared at him for a long moment as the facts slowly clunked into place. “ _You’re_  Kylo Ren?”

It felt jarring to hear his professional name, his pen name if you will, in the cabin. That insulated little world they had built for themselves where he was Ben and she was Rey and any personas beyond that just simply didn’t exist. Except now they did. Because at that moment, in that cabin, he was still Ben Solo.

But now, he was also Kylo Ren.

“I am,” he confirmed, closing his laptop quietly and putting it on the coffee table. He crossed one ankle over the opposite leg and turned to look at her.

She was gaping at him.

“So you—those stories,” she stammered, “the Orion Welkin chronicles—you—they’re about your  _family_?” The gears were turning faster now. “The twins – oh my god – the twins are your mum and Luke! What were their names—?”

“Rigel and Zeta,” he filled in quietly, almost reluctantly.

“Rigel and Zeta! And, and the smuggler, that swashbuckler, the one who had that sidekick, the big hairy guy—”

“Chewbacca was the sidekick, also known as my dog from 1986 to 1997,” he intoned, just filling in all the blanks at this point. “The smuggler, Rick Kessel, was – yes – based on my father.”

“Your f—” She sat back again looking at him stunned. “Rick Kessel was based on your father.” He could tell just by looking at her and her expression that she’d been a Rick Kessel fangirl. He scoffed internally. Of course.  _Weren’t they all._  “But in the end, you had him be a bit of a—”

“Asshole? Uh. Yeah.” He pushed his hair back from his face, something he recognized as a nervous habit, but one he couldn’t get rid of. “I didn’t write him in the most flattering way.”  _An understatement._ The second book – the last one he’d written, almost ten years prior – had ended with Rick leaving Zeta, pregnant and alone, and at the mercy of her father, Orion who had, by then, become Darth Vader. His father had been furious.

In Ben’s defence, it  _was_  loosely based on his parents’ own history, or at least the history he’d been told: there had been a time, briefly, when he’d been an infant that Leia had kicked Han out for an indeterminate amount of time. He’d always come back, though. And she’d always let him.

 _You don’t understand, kid._ He could hear his father’s anger and hurt, even now.  _You never did_.

 _Oh, Ben._ His mother. Sad and, even worse, resigned.  _How could you?_

“What did your parents think of all of this?” she asked tentatively, as though she already knew the answer.

“They hated it,” was his blunt response. “All of it. I hadn’t even told them I was working on it. Hadn’t shown anyone the manuscript. I sent it to about ten different publishers when I was twenty-three years old and had four of them show interest. Chose one, the rest is history.” He shrugged, as though condensing a decade of family upheaval and turmoil into two or three succinct sentences was no big deal. “I never intended for there to be a sequel, but I wrote it within the year and that was published, too. My family, they  _–_  they called it a betrayal. Luke, in his attempts to intervene, to mediate, made things worse. It was him who accused me of being all the things—” That  _he_  had been – Anakin _. Darth Vader._ It still hurt so much that Ben had difficulty putting it into words properly. Instead, he gave a wave of his hand. “I’m sure you can put together the rest.”

She regarded him sadly, her eyes looking between his. She showed no reaction when he mentioned Luke. He didn’t know if that pleased him or not.

The next part, she must have known: the book had exploded. Everyone everywhere was reading it. Those who were “in the know” could piece together that it was written by the nephew and son of famed child psychologists Luke and Leia Skywalker – who, at that time, had taken on her own pseudonym, Organa, to distance herself from the rest of the family – but Ben’s pen name had detracted attention, as did his unwillingness to make appearances or promote the book in any way. Instead, people became enamoured by the mystery of Kylo Ren and obsessed with the story itself. He had other people to speak for him. He declined most interviews. Did perhaps one book tour, after the release of the second book, and refused to even speak to anyone who showed up.

Then came Hollywood. There had been a movie based on the first book, which had done well enough. He hadn’t even attended the premiere – he didn’t have to. He was getting paid regardless. Hell, Ben was still reaping the benefits of the merchandising on that one.

Finally, came the clamoring for more – the conclusion.

At that point, it had become clear the story needed to be told in three parts, particularly as the Kessel character had taken a turn that had displeased audiences. Ben needed to end it – a trilogy now – on a happy note, they’d told him, agent and publishing house alike.

Or at least not on a note that denigrated their most marketable character.

The plan was to release the third book for the five year anniversary, which came and went, with Ben still enjoying his residuals and the money in reprints. They advanced him half a million dollars to just finish it “as soon as possible”, which turned into “for the love of God, do it by the ten-year anniversary, or else we will be forced to take drastic measures.” Ben didn’t quite know what drastic measures entailed, but regardless, a deadline was looming. The ten year mark would be the year that was coming up in just over a week. And Ben had an outline.

“My students love those books,” Rey said, gently breaking his reverie. “It’s one of the only things I can get some of them to read – or listen to.”

“Of course they do,” he responded dryly. Rey looked taken aback by his tone, but that was because she just didn’t understand.

One of the initial issues was that Ben hadn’t  _written_ the books to be marketed to a YA audience. He’d wanted dark and gritty, cursing and violence, and that was how they’d initially been portrayed. He just couldn’t sell it at that level, at the time. Of all the publishing companies that had shown interest in his manuscript, they all said the same thing: tone it down a bit. Nobody else wanted dark and gritty from a twenty-three year old whose ears stuck out goofily and who had yet to grow in to his hands (he still wasn’t sure that had happened). Ben could have told them to fuck off, could have kept it to himself. But around the same time, the twentieth anniversary edition of “How to Raise Your Stubborn Toddler” had come out and Luke was doing another book tour and Ben was so filled with “fuck them all” rage that he took the first offer that sounded appealing, from a publisher that seemed interested enough, and did what they asked him to do to expedite the process. Get something out there that was  _his_  and his alone, not just the anecdotes of his unruly childhood helping to bolster another person’s success.

He couldn’t explain all that to Rey without looking like the lunatic that, honestly, he probably was, so instead he said: “The published book is different from what I had originally written. I changed it a bit to be more palatable to parents purchasing for their teens. Kept some of the violence, toned down the language.” Compromised his integrity – in many ways – for the sake of his spite.

“I see,” she said. “Are you...happy with that?”

He could have laughed out loud. Of course he wasn’t happy. To the surprise of no one (least of all himself) from the moment it had been published, he’d hated it. Hated the whole goddamn thing. Had written the second book running on pure adrenaline and a concoction of Red Bull and spite. Now he dreaded the thought of the third book. Already hated his ideas. It felt wrong to continue things as he’d originally planned – with Zeta and Rick’s son growing up to emulate the evil Orion Welkin – at that point, fully Darth Vader – and exacting his revenge on the father who had betrayed him.

Freud would have had a field day with Ben Solo.

But in real life, Ben’s father had already died: a swift and deadly encounter with pancreatic cancer, six months from diagnosis to burial, about two years after the release of the second novel. Ben had seen him maybe once in that time, then again at the funeral. Staring down at his father’s emaciated form, none of the residual anger or resentment remained. Just a deep and profound sadness for the mistakes he’d made that he would never be able to rectify.

He tried to explain all that to Rey in as little words as possible, but there must have been something about the look in his eyes, because she leaned forward and rested her hand on his arm, squeezing lightly.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said quietly. “It sounds to me like you’ve had to live in the spectre of many different men, all with their own sort of power, in different ways. Anakin, Luke, your dad. It makes sense that you would try and carve your own path, through whatever means necessary. Killing the past through your words. Reinventing your own history.” She slid her hand down his arm, covered his hand with hers and then stared down at them, her smaller, darker hand against his large pale one. “I get that.” She looked up at him then, her eyes soft and understanding.

 _Yes_. She did “get that”, didn’t she?  _Brave girl_.

He was stunned. In a few sentences, she had succinctly cut to the core of the issue – what his issue had always been. Trying to rise from the ashes of dysfunctionality, from the shadow of genius and lunacy and charm and success to come into his own, as his own man, whoever and whatever that man may be. He turned his hand palm up and her fingers slid down his, until just their fingertips were touching.

“I think,” she continued,  as though she hadn’t gutted him, sliced him down to the very core of his being, “that whatever the third story ends up being, it should be  _your_ story. Ben Solo’s. Or whatever name you’ll give Rick and Zeta’s child in the book. Let it be—” She fluttered her other hand, as though looking for the words. “Let it be about redemption. About forgiveness. About—” Here, her eyelids shuttered and she looked away briefly. “About love, maybe. A story that reverses Orion’s mistakes through his grandson – the pull towards light rather than darkness.” She slid her hand back down to his palm, locking his hand with hers, giving it a squeeze.

“More than anything else,” she said, heat in her eyes, “let it be about  _you_.”

* * *

He was going to kiss her.

Rey didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. After she had told him her opinion and he had looked at her,  _really_  looked at her, the torment and the hurt and the softness and the hope evident in those bourbon-coloured eyes, she knew with every fibre of her being that a kiss was imminent.

Sure enough, he glanced down at her mouth. She darted her tongue out nervously to wet her bottom lip, then self-consciously bit it.

His eyes darkened almost imperceptibly and his nostrils flared. He leaned in, slightly. She leaned forward as well, her heart thundering in her chest.

She was milliseconds away from closing her eyes and leaning in the rest of the way, pressing her chapped lips to his soft, plush ones – germs be damned – when the fog of intensity lifted and he leaned back, his face clearing behind an imperceptible mask.

“I’ll think about it,” he murmured, clearing his throat. “Soup?”

“Uh…” Her mind blanked completely, filling instead with the humiliating thought that  _she had almost kissed him_. Jesus  _Christ_  how badly had she misjudged  _that_?

“Rey…” She forced herself to meet his gaze and saw that some of the intensity had returned, along with some of the torment. He lifted his hand and brought it towards her face, almost as though it were doing it unconsciously.

Against her better judgement – her pride, her bloody dignity – she leaned in again and rested her cheek on his open palm, like a needy cat looking for a soft caress.

He obliged, thankfully, or else she might have perished, pushing her hair back with his fingers and cradling her head.

“Thank you,” he said. “For listening.”

“Of course,” she murmured, unable to stop her gaze from dropping to his mouth.

His hand tightened in her hair for a moment before he released her. “I’m going to make lunch. You’re okay with soup?”

“Sure,” she said softly, sitting back and willing her heart to stop beating so frantically. “Soup sounds good. Let me help.”

The rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully, if not a bit awkwardly. They ate their soup, one of the non-expired vegetable soups that had previously been in the cabin and blessedly not frozen – “Must be the salt content”, Ben had grumbled, as Rey heated it up over the stove top – then they played cards with an old deck they had found. If the silence between them lingered at times or the conversation came to a lull, Rey’s mind immediately retreated back to the moment on the couch. She would wonder if he was thinking the same, then would look up at that brooding face, all pouting lips and dark, deep-set eyes, and she would know.

 _Fat bloody lot of good it does me_ , she thought with a grumble.

By the time the daylight had receded and the cabin had once more been enveloped in darkness, they had lit candles and sat close to the fire. Rey was sprawled out on a pile of blankets she’d dragged over from the bedroom, the red-golden glow giving her all the light she needed to read her book. Ben was nearby – not on the floor of course, but sitting in the arm chair pulled close enough, tapping away at his keyboard.

She didn’t ask him again about the story, nor did she offer any more suggestions or ideas. He’d seemed to find a rhythm of sorts, as he was clacking away at the keys more often than not, and she allowed herself to be lulled by the sound in a way, or perhaps lulled more by the comfort and quiet pleasure of his company.

Her eyes began to droop after awhile, her headache coming back in small measures before hitting her full force, the Tylenol she’d taken at lunch finally wearing off.

“Ugh,” she groaned out loud, closing her eyes, putting the open book face down on her stomach.

The clacking stopped immediately. “What’s wrong?” Ben asked, the sounds behind her closed eyes indicating that he had already started to stand up. “Do you need another Tylenol?”

“Yes,” she moaned. “My head. But also – I was getting to the best part,” she whined. She knew she sounded childish, but with illness creeping back into her bones after a blessed reprieve, she  _felt_  a bit petulant about it.

He didn’t say anything and when she cracked her eye open, all she saw was his receding form, heading towards the pill bottle in the kitchen. He brought her a glass of water (seven—no, six water bottles left, she calculated) and two small pills. She took them gratefully and gulped down the water and the medication.

“Thank you,” she gasped out, once her glass was drained and she’d taken a breath. She lay back down on the blankets and closed her eyes, book still resting on her stomach.

She felt, before she heard him approach, the book lifting gently out of her hands.

“This is the page you were on?” he asked. She opened her eyes to see him holding her tiny, worn paperback in his large hands, looking down at the words.

“Er, yes.” She sat up on her elbows and looked up at him. “Why?”

“Lie back down,” he urged. He settled himself on the floor beside her, his long limbs folding in an ungainly, yet somehow graceful way. “Close your eyes.”

She eyed him suspiciously and lay back, keeping her eyes open.  

He flipped the book to look at the cover and snorted. “Austen. Big surprise.”

“I beg your pardon—”  _Tone it down, Agnes Grey._  She cleared her throat. “Just so you know, Jane Austen exerted more of a lasting influence on British literature than many of her peers who lived  _twice_  as long—”

“Okay, okay,” he said laughingly, holding up his hands in surrender. “I take it back. Where were you—ah. Pivotal scene.”

“You’ve read it?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course,” he replied and, the smirk he gave her, good lord – the one that emphasized the divot in his cheek, a boyish twinkle in his eye, and –  _my god_  – was that a wink?

She had never seen him so laidback, so at ease. There was a looseness about him, an inherent charm that was usually buried deep inside, but now was on full display and for her alone.

That was it. She was done for.

She took a deep breath to settle the flutters in her stomach and closed her eyes to listen to his voice as he read.

“‘Captain Wentworth was folding up a letter in great haste, and either could not or would not answer fully…’”

The deep, rich baritone of his voice washed over her, indulgence personified. More soothing than a lullaby, but with a rough cadence that made her skin lift in gooseflesh.

It was hard to imagine a more pleasurable contentment than lying by a roaring fire, listening to this man speak. He could be reading the phonebook for all she cared.

Though  _this_ —this was definitely something.

“‘...such means as are within my reach.’” He paused. She cracked an eye open and looked over at him, the glow of the fire illuminating the sharp and beautiful planes of his face. He was staring down at the page intently, brow furrowed. She thought maybe she saw a flush on his face as he took in the words that followed. Could have been from the fire, she reasoned. But when he cleared his throat and grimaced slightly before he continued, she thought:  _perhaps not_.

“‘You pierce my soul.” Another pause, then: “‘I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.” He turned the page.

Rey was captivated. Her body felt weightless. Her breathing was shallow and erratic. Ben reading those words, arguably Austen’s most romantic, in that resonant voice – the sound of which bordered on luxurious – was almost too much for her to take.

“‘I offer myself to you again,’” he continued, “‘with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.’” He glanced up at her and she closed her eyes quickly, trying to even her breathing.

His voice got quieter, a soft rumble in the room, the only sound other than the hypnotic crackling of the fireplace. “‘Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.’” A pause. “‘I have loved none but you.’”

He continued, page after page, and Rey fell deeper into a blissful semi-lucid state, his voice the only lullaby she’d ever need. His low, sedate, yet somehow richly emotive rumbling cadence eventually lulled her into a deep sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will the shower water [ever get hot](https://shop.latitude51solar.ca/Off-Grid-Solar-s/60.htm)?
> 
> What would Rey's [symptoms](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fever/symptoms-causes/syc-20352759) be, realistically? 
> 
> Did Ben have the right idea with what he [threw away](https://www.thekitchn.com/heres-what-to-keep-and-throw-out-after-a-power-outage-223425) thanks to a fridge that's not working?
> 
> Ben's delicious pancake recipe can [be yours](http://www.auntjemima.com/products/pancake_waffle_mixes/buttermilk_complete)! 
> 
> Finally, the last bit of this chapter was my nod to [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives), who now (in my mind) owns _Persuasion_ (and my heart). Read [her fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511147/chapters/38673128) for the Reylo/Persuasion fix you never knew you needed. And, if you're as captivated by the story of Wentworth and Anne as the rest of us (or you just want to imagine Adam Driver reading it to you), you can find the full text [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/105/105-h/105-h.htm)
> 
> ** _Thank you to my eagle–eye reader, Scribe4for, who caught the broken links! Fixed now. :)_


	5. christmas eve, part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hi, yes I am still alive. What a crazy month. Shall we get back to Christmas? (In March.)
> 
> Thanks go out to [slipgoingunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder) for making me question EVERYTHING in her initial alpha-read (in a good way) and to [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives) for yet another impeccable beta. Special shout-out to [raven-maiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_maiden/works) for being a great friend and doing her best, dammit. All these people have wonderful works of their own (as if you didn't know), so go read them. 
> 
> This chapter was initially one very, very long one that I've now split into two medium-length ones (this also means the chapter count has increased _yet again_ ). Luckily, both chapters are already written (the next one just needs a bit more polishing) and so it should be up by this weekend - which is especially good, since this one ends on a bit of an angst-cliffhanger. So, if you feel like you can't handle that right now, it might be a good idea to wait until Chapter 6 is posted, too. 
> 
> Thank you to all of you who have stuck around. Onto Chapter 5!

* * *

Ben Solo was dreaming.

He knew he was dreaming.

And, so help him, he was staying in this goddamn dream as long as humanly possible.

 _Finally,_ something inside him breathed and he could see her beneath him in his mind’s eye, warm and soft and pliant. If he suspended his disbelief just enough, he could almost feel her warm, liquid heat wrapped around his throbbing cock. A shallow, involuntary jerking of his hips sent a frisson of pleasure through his entire body.

The aura of the dream shifted, tendrils of lucidity causing him to fade in and out of semi-consciousness. When he settled deeper into sleep, he found their positions had shifted and, instead of being on top of her, he was pressed against her back.

He buried his face in her neck, silken in its softness, locks of hair tickling his nose, the scent of lavender and Downy that had tormented him since the moment he set foot in the cabin prevalent here most of all.

Running his hands across her stomach, desperate to feel more of her, he was frustrated to find layers of blankets impeded him from the contact he desired. He grasped and dug and finally slipped his hand underneath and over the warm and velvety softness of her skin. She gasped lightly.

“Ben,” she whispered, arching back, pressing herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her tighter, opening his mouth against her shoulder, scraping her lightly with his teeth. She moaned softly, arching further. He felt like he could come just from the pressure of her gently curved ass pressing into him.

His consciousness stirred slightly, almost like he could hear the sound of an alarm somewhere in the depths of his psyche – a warning, a reminder. Something he needed to pay attention to, to acknowledge.

But not now.

Not while he had her in his arms, the scent of her in his nose and his mouth, her body pressed against his and he was so close—so close—

“Ben,” she said again in that whisper-moan that drove him wild, that made him bring his hand up to cup the gentle curve of her breast, feeling the nipple pebble in his palm. Her voice still held the rasp of her lingering illness—

That internal alarm began to ring louder, urging him to remember—remember—

“Ben?” Her voice sounded stronger, like she had shaken off the coils of sleep that still had him in their grasp. Her body – before, lax and pliant, liquid softness in his arms – grew tense, as though realization had dawned along with consciousness.

 _No, Rey_ , he thought to his dream girl. _Not yet._

Rey.

Rey?

It was Ben’s turn to freeze, his entire body going stock still as awareness finally claimed him. This wasn’t a dream, this wasn’t a _fucking_ dream. This was _real_. He was in bed, in the old Skywalker cabin, wrapped around his uncle’s co-worker—no, not just wrapped around her. Essentially _molesting_ her. Whatever vestiges of sleep had cloaked him previously, the realization of where he was – and what he was doing – was akin to a bucket of cold water on his head.

“Jesus—” He jerked back as though he’d been struck by lightning and tried to unobtrusively crawl around her and out of the bed. His black Nike joggers really did nothing to hide his—overenthusiastic protrusion, which had yet to get the hint that something wildly inappropriate had gone down. “I’m sorry, Rey, fuck.” He tried to keep his back to her, without being too obvious about why.

 _I think she knows_ , his brain sardonically reminded him.

“It’s okay.” Her voice was still hoarse, raspy with sleep and perhaps the lingering effects of her illness ( _—and also probably shock. Horror?)_.

He hazarded a glance over at her. She was bundled up in the sheets, that stupid Moncler coat resting on top of the pile – he belatedly felt the cold beneath his feet and the chill in the air, even through his sweater – her eyes wide open and staring up at him, the hazel irises glowing green in the hazy light that filtered in through the window. Her hair was mussed, up in that bun she wore on the top of her head, and her nose – the only part of her face below her eyes that he could see as his gaze tracked down – was a bit red; still raw and perhaps also a bit cold. She continued to give him that wide-eyed, indecipherable stare and they regarded each other in a loaded silence for a moment that felt as though it stretched into an eternity.

“I—” He cleared his throat and agitatedly ran his hand through his hair. “I was dreaming—I didn’t know—”

“Ben.” She moved the blankets down a bit so now he could see her mouth, her chin, as she wrapped them underneath her. “It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m—I didn’t—it’s fine,” she repeated, with a slight shake of her head, as though she’d held back what she had truly wanted to say. “Things happen, it’s been a—weird couple days. Close proximity. Cabin fever. I mean, it’s—I get it.”

His eyes bounced between hers, trying unsuccessfully to read her mind. Her expression remained inscrutable.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated lamely, at a loss for what else to do. Thankfully at this point his raging hard-on had dissipated slightly and he tried not to shift or adjust, though his hands were practically twitching in the effort to keep from reaching down and cupping his aching balls.

“Stop,” she chided lightly. “I’ll survive. I promise. I won’t tell anyone how the infamous, reclusive Kylo Ren felt me up in his grandfather’s cabin.”

His face must have conveyed some sort of the poorly-concealed distress he felt at that statement, because the smirk she was trying to smother exploded into a full blown laugh that then dissolved into a coughing fit.

“Sodding—god—damn—” she hacked out, burying her face into her pillow. “Gah!” She came up for air and looked at him again, hair askew, one eye open, an impish grin on her face. “It’s _fine_ , Ben, trust me. _Trust me_.” Something in her tone made him look up quickly and peer closely at her, but she had already nestled herself deeper into the covers once more, hiding her face from view. “It’s bloody freezing in here,” she muttered from somewhere within the depths.

He let out a bracing breath. Okay. _Okay_. They could get past this. He was going to shower, then he was going to take stock of the snow situation and the car situation and see if there was a chance of them getting out of there anytime soon. Screw Christmas. Screw Canadian winter. If he was to maintain his sanity ( _and dignity_ ), he was going to need to do something to separate himself from her.

He was good at running. He realized this, now. He’d run from his family. When he was displeased with his work, he’d run from that, too. And now, confronted with the possibility of something more, here in this cabin, here with her—

He glanced back at her, buried under his coat and the pile of blankets, as she let out a contented little hum that made his cock twitch, suddenly showing signs of life once more.

It was too soon. He wasn’t in a position to be with anyone. He needed to get his shit together, his life organized. And it wasn’t going to happen with him hiding away in this cabin.

He grabbed his duffel bag off the floor and tossed it on the bed, careful to avoid her feet, and began digging through it for a change of clothes.

“What are you doing?”

Looking up, he saw her regarding him again, two tired eyes peeking out from under the blankets.

“Gonna finally take a shower,” he told her, grabbing a pair of black socks and adding it to the collection of new clothing in his hands.

“Water’s freezing,” she warned him.

He pursed his lips and took a deep breath through his nose as he considered her words.

“Good,” he clipped out finally, before leaving the room.

* * *

Rey watched Ben leave the room at an accelerated pace. As soon as he was out of sight, she let out the shaky breath she’d been holding. Inhaling again deeply, she lay back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling, finally allowing the chaotic mess of her thoughts to tumble to the forefront of her mind.

It had taken her about two-point-five seconds to wake up after she’d felt him start to move against her back. She’d come fully awake when she’d felt his bare hand – huge, slightly chilled – dig under her clothing before sliding across her stomach and then cupping her breast. If she paused right then, held her breath slightly, she could feel the weight of it still, holding her firmly, almost reverently, his thumb stroking the soft skin. 

She’d had the sense that he was asleep – he’d been too quiet, aside from soft groans that made her skin tingle, and there was a brazenness, a confidence that she hadn’t experienced with him yet when they were awake. Though admittedly, he had no problem being an asshole, there was still an insecurity behind it, an introverted aura that didn’t mesh with the boldness of that morning. Not to mention his behaviour the previous day when he’d _also_ woken her up with his hard-on and had nearly perished from awkward embarrassment.

Still, even knowing it was mostly unintentional and that he was probably going to be horrified and full of regrets the second he woke up, it just felt too _good_. That large hand on her breast, his other arm snaking around her belly, his muscular, broad chest against her back. Even the feel of his erection, rigid and _huge_ , my god, and  _all for her_. Oh, sure, he’d probably been dreaming of something or someone else – she had no illusions about her attractiveness, especially the way he’d seen her the past couple of days: makeup-less, raccoon-eyed, frizzy-haired, and sick – but in that moment, in that bed, it was her ass that he’d been pressed against, her body that he’d wanted.

She’d reveled in the feel of him, sturdy and large, warm and safe all at once. The feeling of being wanted.

It had just been so long since someone – anyone – had held her. The past two nights, even when she’d been half out of her head with fever, had been so comforting, so enjoyable. She’d barely allowed him to protest the previous night, after he’d woken her up from the floor where she’d fallen asleep during his _Persuasion_ read-aloud, and insisted that he continue to share the bed with her.

 _For practical reasons_ , she’d told him. The truth was more about the simple pleasure of warming and deriving warmth from another human being. She was so touch-starved that she couldn’t shake the feeling of _rightness_ , even with him – a virtual stranger.

_Was he a stranger, though?_

She knew there was always a part of her that tended to downplay – to modulate her emotions and exhibit restraint rather than allowing her feelings get away from her. Too much attachment had never served her well, so she worked hard at not getting attached. She recognized this trait in herself even now, as she continued to try and convince herself that Ben _was_ a stranger, that this cabin meant nothing, that this moment in time needed to end sooner rather than later.

Call it self-preservation, call it willful ignorance. Whatever it was, she wasn’t enough of a liar or a phony to completely disregard the thoughts when they came. Instead, she had to let them slide in and then back out again; if she stayed really, really still, in body and mind, maybe they would go without leaving too much of a mark.

She sighed again, her body still humming with unresolved sexual tension, begging for some type of release. She skimmed her hands down, briefly considered taking care of it herself, but the thought itself was a turn off. So much time – really, too much – in the past decade “taking care of herself” in all the ways. She was tired. She had developed a numbness towards her own abilities, brought on perhaps by melancholy, or the holidays, or the feeling of being alone in that cabin even as she shared it with someone else.

Whatever it was, the desire to get off was only as strong as the man who could do it – she knew that, this time, _she_ wouldn’t be enough.

She heard the shower chug to a shrieking, shuddering start. Heard a low, deep exclamation – a curse, most likely – as Ben must have felt the temperature for the first time.

 _Well_ , she thought with a short, light chuckle, _enjoy it for both of us._

After spending a few more minutes in bed, tossing and turning and trying to fall back asleep to no avail, she decided to drag some of the blankets with her to the couch and set up shop there until Ben got out of the shower and could build the fire.

She realized, of course, that what she _should_ do was be kind and make breakfast, like he had for her. Or maybe try and start the fire herself, regardless of how unsuccessful she knew it would be. But – just like with sleeping alone and getting herself off – she had grown complacent in the forty-eightish hours they’d spent together; too used to the idea of another person around to do the mundane things that she’d spent too much time doing for herself.

 _I’ll give it ten minutes_ , she thought to herself; a concession. _Ten minutes and if he’s not out, I’ll try and light the burners._

As she got settled into the couch, wrapping herself up in the blankets and the ever-present Moncler parka she’d dragged from the room, her eyes caught the discarded copy of _Persuasion_ on the worn coffee table. She thought back to the previous night, when she’d fallen asleep to the sound of his deep voice, raw and velvet, reading the lines from Captain Wentworth’s letter. Her heart did a funny glub, a painful little beat-skip, and she sunk deeper into the covers.

Her chest had rattled when her breath had caught at the thought of Ben reading _Persuasion_ and she coughed a couple of times, experimentally. A headache still lingered, but her cough had loosened up, her throat wasn’t as sore, and her nose felt clearer than it had in days. The disorientation and exhaustion that came with her fever had thankfully dissipated, which led her to believe that the fever had as well.

She turned to look out the window, the sky still the half-dark hue of dawn. She hadn’t been getting as much sleep here as she’d originally anticipated she would, but even with her illness, she felt strangely refreshed. Renewed.

She watched as the quiet world slowly awoke, the sky getting brighter from the sun rising on the opposite side of the cabin or somewhere behind it, maybe, who knew? (Directions weren’t Rey’s strong suit.) Still, she enjoyed the still and silent calmness of a snow-covered, awakening landscape. There was certainly peace here. Peace and serenity, calm tranquility.

“FUCK!”

…And Ben.

Looking over her shoulder, she watched as his humongous, shivering form emerged from the bathroom, the same Nike joggers on, but otherwise barefoot and bare-chested, using the brown towel she’d found yesterday to scrub roughly at his hair and body. She stared, her mouth slack, at his bare chest still glistening with water droplets, small brown nipples sharp and pebbled, a smattering of freckles and moles on his upper body as though God had tossed a small handful at him and allowed them to land wherever they may.

“So fucking cold,” he muttered, teeth chattering as he disappeared into the bedroom, t-shirt and sweater clutched in his hand. He emerged a minute later, fully dressed ( _drat_ ), except for his bare feet padding from the bedroom towards the kitchen.

“Rey?” he called out, not seeing her camouflaged on the couch.

“Yo,” she responded, allowing her top knot to poke up further from the back of the couch as she stared.

He quickly looked over and she saw relief colour his features, before his usual implacable mask shuttered his expression once more.

“Thanks for making breakfast,” was all he said, light sarcasm colouring his words as he moved towards the kitchen once more. She heard him shuffling around, opening drawers.

Though his tone bordered more on amused than acerbic, she still started to get up, guiltily. He had moved into the living room area before she could even disentangle herself from the covers, impatiently waving his hand at her in a “stay put” gesture as he made his way towards the fireplace.

“I’m joking,” he said as he added new logs to the hearth. “You should be resting anyway, building up your strength.” He paused and she felt warmth unfurl in her chest at his care and consideration for her health. A warmth that was promptly extinguished by his next words: “I’m going to see if we can get out of here today.”

“What?” she gasped, unable to hide her shock and maybe even a little bit of her hurt. “Get out of here? Today?” All she could manage to do was repeat his words back at him.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, shuffling logs into his desired arrangement. “Enough’s enough. Neither of us got the solitary getaway we were looking for. I think it’s best if we just cut our losses and head home.”

She was stunned. Of all things she expected from him, this wasn’t even top of the list.

“Weather seems to be warming up,” he continued, head in the hearth, seemingly unaware that he was eviscerating her with each new word he spoke, “snow’s probably melted a bit. I’m sure there’s still an old shovel in the shed to clear out some of the driveway and I have a brush in my backseat that can clean off our cars.” He reached back into the log holder and pulled out a magazine that looked like it had been torn to shreds. As she watched, he methodically began to tear off strips of it and add it to the log pile he had created. She remained silent and eventually he looked up at her.

Her expression must have given away something; although his eyes appeared to have only planned a brief glance in her direction – he’d looked up and then looked quickly away – they came back up to her face almost immediately and stayed there for several beats. He stopped tearing the paper. “What?”

“Nothing,” she muttered immediately, feeling her walls going up, brick by brick. _Screw you_ , she thought. _Leave, then._ “But I’m staying.”

He stared at her, the magazine going lax in his grip. “Staying?” he asked, surprised. “What for?”

She shrugged, picking at her nails. “If you’re going to be gone, I get my solitude. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You actually  _want_ to be here alone on Christmas?”

His incredulous tone rankled. _No, you imbecile. I wanted to be with you_. She violently sledgehammered that unexpected and intrusive thought.

“Why not? Whether I’m alone here or alone at home, what difference does it make?”

He was silent.

 _That’s right_ , she sneered, her thoughts caustic, borne from her hurt and distress. _Did you forget? You’re an orphan partly by choice. I’m one entirely by circumstance. The_ real _kind_ , she added in her head, a misguided, backwards sense of pride associated with the proclamation.

“It just…” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t make sense to stay,” he said finally, not looking at her. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

She shrugged again and looked away, too. “For you, maybe. I’ll be fine.”

He glanced at her then – at the same time she’d glanced at him, _drat_ – and their eyes caught, held. She felt the current of electricity that shot between them, saw the tempest in his eyes. Whatever he was _saying_ his decision was, the truth was that he was torn. She wasn’t in the business of begging, however, so she kept her mouth shut. _Let him figure it out for himself._

“Let me see what it’s like out there and then I’ll decide,” he said finally. He used the lighter to spark a fire in the hearth and soon the logs and tinder were engulfed in flames and the fireplace emitted a pleasant heat that began to curl around Rey.

She barely felt it.

* * *

They ate a mostly silent breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches – sliced bananas inside for Rey, a whole banana, separate, for Ben – washed down with some orange juice.

“We’re almost out of water bottles,” Rey muttered, poking at a banana that had fallen out of her sandwich, before eating it off her plate.

“You’re going to stay here with no bottled water?” he asked her casually. He drained the rest of his glass and, without waiting for an answer, piled their plates and took everything over the sink.

She glared at his back. “Well, if it didn’t take you one big gulp to finish an entire bottle, we’d be able to ration better, wouldn’t we?”

He started the water and rinsed off the dishes, barely glancing over his shoulder to say, “You’re the one who bought the half-litre ones.”

“Yeah,” she retorted, “for _me_.”

He was silent, which was somehow more infuriating than if he’d responded.

“And another thing—” Uh-oh. She was on a roll. “—what gave you the right to just _throw out_ the milk and eggs that I bought? I’m sure they weren’t that bad yet. We could’ve put them outside and brought things in as needed!”

He shut off the water and wiped his hands on the dish towel before turning to level her with a stare.

She put on her best middle-school teacher face and stared right back.

“So,” he began, still deceptively casual, “you mean to tell me that you have an issue with the fact that I didn’t put food...outside...in the middle of a forest? _Semi-rotten food_ , might I add. So that it could—what? Attract half-starved animals? Or freeze – since it’s been around minus ten out there – and become totally unusable, like the eggs? Or be good for one-time use, because you’d have to un-thaw the whole damn bag for the half cup you’d need for your cereal and then use the rest in the six-hour window that remained?” He crossed his arms over his chest and she certainly did not notice how his biceps bulged under his black t-shirt. “ _I_ didn’t invent bagged milk. Bagged milk makes no sense to me. Why is it my fault that the milk was in bags and needed to be tossed? Why is it my fault that you bought _three_ bags of milk that needed to be tossed? Huh?”

“It comes in threes,” she muttered. “And there was a sale.”

A muscle ticked under his left eye and he blinked a couple times before looking away. “Listen,” he sighed. “It’s just...not a good idea. If I stay. Okay? If _you_ want to stay…” He shrugged and sighed again. “What can I say to you? I still think you should go and at least be somewhere where there’s civilization, but for me – my life literally imploded and I just...left. I need to go back and pick up the pieces.”

He took a step towards her. “And I don’t think…” It was almost as though he re-thought his approach and stopped, absently nibbling his thumb nail. He tried again:  “Me staying here…”

Once more, he stalled. Instead of speaking, he looked at her and something in his eyes shifted. Time felt like it was suspended and she found her breath catching, holding, as she waited for him to finish his sentence. A tingle ran over her skin; she felt the shadow of his body embracing hers from behind, his hand cupping her breast.

 “It’s not a good idea,” he said again, finally, after a silence that was a beat too long.

She almost threw her hands up in the air in frustration. Not a good idea? _Not a good idea?_ Whatever. They were just going in circles with this conversation and she was sick of feeling like she was a breath away from begging.

“Fab,” was all she said. “Well, it’s up to you, of course. I’m going to go read my book. Let me know what it’s like out there and if you need any help digging yourself out.”

With that she pushed back from the table and went to the bedroom, feeling his eyes on her the entire time.

* * *

She’d spent about twenty minutes reading and re-reading the same page of _Anna Karenina_ (she’d refused to pick up _Persuasion_ again) when her curiosity got the better of her.

Ben had dug through the closet in the bedroom until he’d emerged with a pair of sturdy winter boots that looked like they had seen better days. Grabbing the Moncler jacket off the couch beside where she sat, he bundled up and attempted to venture out.

It took a few pushes to get the door open and when he finally did it, it was only a small amount – barely enough for him to fit. Somehow, he managed to squeeze himself through and he closed the door with a bang, wind and snow entering the cabin in a flurry before quickly settling.

She’d doggedly returned to her book, trying to convince herself that she didn’t care where the hell he was going to find a shovel or whether or not his legs would get so cold from being buried in the snow that they would need to be amputated following the inevitable frostbite.

Nope. Certainly did not care.

For twenty minutes.

That was all the time she’d managed to grant her will power, before she had to put the book down and go look out the small window by the front door.

She’d seen him travel across the large, picture window in the main room exactly twice: once towards the back of the cabin and then a return trip to the front, old metal shovel in hand. After that, her concept of what was happening out there was strictly based off the banging and – if she listened carefully – loud grunts and curses emanating from outside the house.

She peered out, her sense of deja vu tingling. The last time she’d peered through that window, she’d been seeing Ben for the first time arriving at the cabin. A melancholic feeling pierced her heart at the thought that she would soon be watching him depart, but she quickly filed it away, her knack for compartmentalizing emotions coming in handy yet again.

He’d already accomplished quite a bit – the front porch was completely clean and he’d cleared a path to both their cars, as well as around and between them. His car was on and running, the snow off of it completely. Hers had been cleaned, too, though it remained still and quiet. She briefly wondered if it would ever start at this point.

He was right about the snow having melted slightly. The sun shone brightly in the sky and she could see the rivulets that remained of whatever had been on her car running down the front of her windshield.

She leaned over and cracked open the door slightly to feel for herself. Still cold, but certainly not as cold as it had been even the day she’d arrived.

 _Maybe he’ll get to go after all_ , she thought glumly.

He was working down the long driveway at that point, the end of which curved around and disappeared through the trees. He was going to be at this for hours, she realized.

Against her better judgement, she poked her head out further.

“Need any help?” she called out.

He paused and looked up at her, squinting in the sun. “What are you doing?” he called back. “Get inside!”

“I’m seeing if I can help you leave any faster!” she hollered, annoyed that he’d rebuffed her kindness, before turning and hiding her sudden coughing fit behind the door.

“Don’t worry about me. Get inside before you aggravate your cold. Close the door!” He turned back to shoveling, grunting each time he tossed the snow aside.

“Viruses cause colds, not fresh air,” she muttered, closing the door behind her. She looked around the cabin, which felt emptier than it had since she’d first gotten there.

“Better get used to it,” she sighed to herself, before going to put the kettle to boil.

* * *

It took him just over an hour to finish. He came back in, stomping his feet on the carpet before stepping further inside the cabin.

They caught eyes, him still snow-covered in the entryway and her on the couch with her book and her cold cup of tea on the coffee table.

She lifted her chin slightly. He lowered his. They continued to stare.

Whatever he saw in her eyes, it caused him to sigh and – giving his feet one last stomp – he reached down to take off his boots.

He quickly and efficiently undressed, hanging his stuff up by the door again. She took in the domesticity of it for the last time – his coat and hers, side by side – before looking down at her book and steadfastly ignoring him. He trudged to the bedroom -  _maybe. Who knew?_ \- and it was minutes of shuffling around in there, presumably changing.  _Who cares_. 

Her lack of attention to his whereabouts is what caused her jump up and yelp when he sat down heavily beside her, his bejeaned legs stretching alongside her legginged ones.

“Do you need me to go over how to use the burners on the stove?” he asked, ignoring her reaction to his sudden presence.

“Figured it out,” she replied, nodding towards her tea cup.

“What about the fire?” he pressed. “Do you know how to light a fire that’ll last?”

“Sure do,” she confirmed cheerfully, doggedly forcing her eyes to stay glued to her book page. _I can figure it out._ You _managed to do it. How hard could it be?_ She steadfastly ignored the thought of her abysmal fire before he’d arrived.

“How will you stay warm at night?” The last question was asked quieter, rougher, though he cleared his throat after he spoke.

“I’ll manage!” she chirped, continuing to look down at her book.

“Dammit, Rey.” His harsh tone finally caused her to blink up at him in surprise. “I wish you would just—”

The cabin shuddered then, a deep rumbling sound emitting from somewhere in its depths, and both Rey and Ben looked around in surprise. The light in the kitchen and above the stove had both turned on and the refrigerator was humming pleasantly back to life.

“Well, there you go,” she said quietly, finally meeting his eyes directly with her own. He was silent. “Now you have no excuse.” She looked back down at her book. “No reason to stay.”

She could feel him staring at her, but refused to look up again. For the second, third, hundredth time, she thought, _I won’t beg._ If he wanted to go, he could go.

After what felt like forever, he got up from the couch on a deep exhale and slowly walked to the bedroom. It only took him a few minutes to pack up his stuff and he emerged again shortly after, duffel bag over his shoulder.

“I could grab you some groceries, bring them back—” he began to offer, but at that point she’d had enough.

“Ben,” she said, loudly and firmly, putting the book down on the table hard. “You said it when you first came here and I’ll remind you of it now – I am _not_ your charity case. I have a week’s worth of bread and peanut butter, my cheese slices will be rejuvenated in the cold fridge, I can boil and cool the water for drinking, I can eat dry cereal, I can make myself soups – I will be _fine_. I’m not here as a foil to your guilty conscience. You said you had to go; _go._ ” Breathing heavily, she stared at him intently as he stared back, mouth agape.

After a moment, he found his voice. “What if the power—”

“I will charge my phone to full battery and continue to shovel myself out as needed,” she cut him off. “If the power goes out again, I’ll leave,” she added, a concession.

He nodded, though he still looked uneasy, scratching the back of his head distractedly. “The way I left things—my job—” he started again, the same explanation he’d been trying to give her all day.

She was already shaking her head. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. I don’t know what you want from me. My permission? My blessing? You’re an adult and so am I. I was planning on staying here alone from the start – you were just a—a—a hiccup to those original plans.” She pretended not to see his wince. “Now things are back on track.” She grabbed her book again. “Drive safely,” she said, dismissing him by looking back down at whatever page she’d opened it to; it didn’t matter anyway – she hadn’t read a damn word since the moment she first picked it up.

He stood there a bit longer – she stubbornly refused to look up – before silently turning and leaving. She heard some shuffling and then the door opened. When she glanced towards him – she couldn’t help herself – he was standing at the open door, coat and scarf on, duffel slung over his shoulder. He had his back to her, but he turned his face enough so she could see his profile, locks of dark hair hanging over his brow in a way that was _extremely_ unattractive and not remotely appealing and certainly did not make her heart clench in any way, pleasant or unpleasant.

“‘Bye, Rey.” He said it so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, if not for the projective quality of his low, deep voice. “Merry Christmas.”

Her composure cracked slightly and she bit the inside of her cheek hard as she forced herself to meet his gaze. His expression was inscrutable, though his eyes held unspoken depths of emotion.

He would break her; of this she was certain.

“Merry Christmas, Ben,” she returned, keeping her voice steady by some miracle. _Go_.

He took one last long, lingering look at her.

_Go. Go. Go now._

Then he turned and walked out, closing the door firmly behind him.

She waited until she heard his car start; heard the steady revving of his tires as it worked its way out over the snow. She waited until she assumed his tail-lights were out of view.

And that was when she allowed the tears to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The question we're all wondering: how long [CAN](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/aq54jx/how_long_can_you_leave_kraft_singles_out_of_the/) Kraft Singles last out of the fridge?
> 
> What in god's name is [bagged milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_bag)? 
> 
> And, more importantly, [WHY](https://www.foodnetwork.ca/shows/great-canadian-cookbook/blog/why-do-canadians-drink-bagged-milk/)? 
> 
> EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS to [Escapaeronaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escapaeronaut/pseuds/Escapaeronaut) for [this article on the Audi R8's snow capabilities](https://jalopnik.com/buy-john-olssons-700-hp-audi-r8-and-arrive-to-the-ski-s-1674099905). Ahem.


	6. christmas eve, part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big Thanks apply for the same reasons as previous chapter. Essentially, this chapter would not exist the way you see it, if not for [slipgoingunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder) and the fire she lights under my ass to consistently try and impress her, [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives)' unbelievably thorough and impressive betas, and [raven-maiden's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_maiden/works) final read-throughs to make sure everything is publishable and that I won't embarrass any of the aforementioned people whose names are now attached to this thing (including, I guess, myself). Without these ladies, I am nothing.
> 
> This chapter is the second part of my Very Long Chapter, that has been reconfigured quite a bit and actually made _longer_ , because that's just how I roll? 
> 
> We're on to big things after this, people. For now - enjoy. Thanks for reading!

* * *

Crying all day, for Rey, was an unfortunate but familiar pastime.

A relic from the time when she – An Orphan™ for all intents and purposes, and thus neglected in the highest order as was legally permissible – would spend her days waiting for parents who would never return to rescue her from a system that she would never fully belong to. Too old to be considered adoptable by most, too young to be self-sufficient, she would bounce, unwelcome, from home to home, her tears leaving lingering trails like the breadcrumbs in a fairytale. 

In other words: for better or for worse, she was used to tears.

Used to the way they flowed steadily, impeded only by a hiccup or a sniffle, as she trudged aimlessly through the cabin from room to room.

Used to the taste of those tears combined with Kraft Singles, which – miraculously? obviously? – hadn’t spoiled.

And, finally, used to the feeling of the tears that were still there even though they no longer came down. The dry heaviness that had settled at the back of her throat might actually be the worst feeling of them all.

She had tried to be productive in the time that he’d been gone, in the midst of all the crying. Took a tepid - thankfully not freezing - shower. Put away dishes, took inventory of the food she still had, put some water in the fridge to cool, made some ice. She’d picked up the remaining bottle of wine and lingered with it in her hand, debating whether getting absolutely shitfaced was a good idea or not. She’d sighed, before putting it aside and tidying up all the candles that they’d left staggered around the main area instead.

Afterwards, she’d tackled her stuff. Put all her dirty laundry in a separate compartment in her bag. Folded and tidied the clothes that were still clean, placing them neatly in the bag’s main compartment. (Her underwear was safely hidden at the bottom now, on principle). Plugged in the space heater, with the sullen acknowledgment that it was more than necessary now. All the magazines and the books she had yet to read were in a neat pile on the coffee table. She’d cleaned the kitchen as best she could with a bit of vinegar she’d found under the sink and some of the cooled boiled water. The smell reminded her of her adolescence; a scent and a habit that she’d carried with her into adulthood. No point in splurging for fancy countertop cleaners when water and white vinegar did the trick.

After all was said and done, she’d migrated back to the couch, which was where she lay now, in the waning mid-afternoon light coming in from the picture window. She wasn’t even pretending to read anymore. Instead, she just stared morosely at the flickering fire. Ben had built it up well and it burned strongly still, the flames licking upwards, consuming the logs and tinder, disappearing upwards towards the chimney. It was a warm, crackling, Christmas fire. Perfect in its execution and practicality: the room was toasty without being uncomfortable.

Still, Rey wrapped the blankets tighter around her, trying – and failing – to ward off the kind of cold that came from within.

She sighed. Her head had begun to throb again, her congestion and sinus pain creeping back in slowly. She still felt much better than she’d had the previous two days, _thank God_ , but the persistent ache began to nag at her. She wondered if she had another Tylenol.

At first, she ignored the impulse to go check. But soon, the pounding in her head refused to be ignored – an aftereffect of the tears in combination with the cold, perhaps.

Dragging her body off the couch, she trudged to the bedroom. At the foot of the bed was the trunk where the old blankets had been, her duffel bag settled on top of the lid. She grabbed the bag and pulled it towards her. As she unzipped, she absently glanced up towards the unmade bed and her heart pinched as she noticed the pile of blankets she’d left on top of the covers. It was the assortment that Ben had pulled out that first night to keep them as warm as possible while they slept. She felt a fresh wave of tears threaten as she tried not to think about the past forty-eight hours.

Instead, she grabbed the pile and haphazardly folded them, chastising herself for not doing it earlier when she’d  _already_  been crying, before opening the lid of the trunk and placing them inside. Then, with a deep sigh, she placed her duffel on top of blanket mountain and resumed digging through it, hoping to hear the telltale rattle of a Tylenol bottle. Finally, after some mild struggles, her hands grasped something cylindrical.

“Ha,” she exclaimed in a quiet, half-hearted sort of triumph, pulling it out and twisting the top off. She shook the single remaining pill out into her hand and, as her ( _standard_ ) shitty luck would have it, the blasted thing bounced out of her palm and into the depths of the open trunk.

“Blast, damn, fuck,  _fuck_ ,” she cursed through gritted teeth, tossing her duffel on the floor to dig through the old chest. She pulled out piles of blankets and crocheted tablecloths to no avail. Lifting an old briefcase up and out, she finally caught sight of the gel capsule in the far back corner.

Relieved, she grabbed it, inspected it slightly, and – assured of its cleanliness – popped it in her mouth, proceeding to uncomfortably swallow it dry. She looked around to see if there was a half-empty water bottle or glass of water anywhere in the room, when her eye caught on the briefcase again.

It was a smart-looking thing, dark red leather with beige accents. She lifted it up again, testing its weight. It had a heft to it, as though it were full, though nothing moved inside. She noticed there were two latches on the front and she briefly considered her next move.

_To hell with it, right?_

Flicking the latches, she popped open the lid. To her astonishment, it wasn’t a suitcase at all but a record player.

It had a turntable, a needle. The dial for the RPMs, the speaker. It looked old, to be sure, but well-maintained and lovingly preserved.

 _Just like everything in this place_ , she thought, with bittersweet admiration. She touched each part gently, wondering how it even worked. She glanced back inside the trunk and leaned forward, shuffling some of the remaining blankets aside before finding what she was looking for.

Stacks and stacks of records, the small kind, neatly piled up on top of each other. She lifted them out carefully and flipped through them, recognizing some of the names; others, not so much. She paused before separating one from the rest and staring at it.

She immediately recognized Frank Sinatra on the front or, at least, a cartoon rendering of him. Flipping to look at the back, her eyes roved over the list of songs.

 _A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra_.

“Nothing jolly here, old chum,” she informed the rosy-cheeked rendering.

Still…it  _was_  Christmas. Maybe it would be nice if it felt like it a little.

She gingerly slipped the record out of its delicate sleeve and placed it on the turntable, “A” side up. Looking at the knobs and dials, she experimentally turned a few here and there. She tried to move the needle onto the record, but it wouldn’t budge. She wanted to try more – turn a dial harder, flip the thing upside down, take it apart and put it back together, piece by piece – but she was worried about permanently damaging it. Obviously it had meant something to the family, to be kept there this way, so lovingly preserved.

So, she left it be. She would just have to accept the fact that Christmas seemed hell-bent on staying as far away as possible from the Skywalker cabin.

It made her sad, of course. But that was okay – she was used to it.

* * *

She must have dozed off for a short while at some point, because when she woke up, the light had changed slightly in the room. She was lying on the bed now, the old vinyls around her and the record player by her feet close to the wall with the Sinatra record sitting primly on the turntable.

She blinked and cleared her throat, still half asleep, wiping her face with her sleeve to take care of any unchecked drool. She stared at the ceiling as she briefly considered her next move, before sleepily allowing her eyelids to close again, when suddenly, she heard the sound of thumping – a heavy, thudding tread – coming from outside the front door.

She sat up with a gasp, fully awake in seconds, her heart hammering in her chest.

_Who the fuck could it be?_

It obviously wasn’t Ben, who had probably long ago crossed the border and was steadily making his way through New York State. Luke, perhaps? Someone...else?

The thought of a stranger finding the cabin, seeing the lone car outside – maybe they’d been scoping out the place, maybe they’d seen the other car leave, maybe— _oh for heaven’s sakes, Rey, really? Murderers just hiding amongst the trees in the middle of winter, waiting for their opportunity to strike?_

She tried not to think of how many horror movies had that exact same premise.

The footsteps stopped and then there was a bang at the door. Rey scrambled out of the bed, desperately looking around for a weapon of some sort. She stumbled out of the room and into the kitchen, opening the first drawer she saw and pulling out a—meat pounder?

 _Perfect_.

On the second bang, the door swung open.

Rey hollered like a barbarian, holding the meat pounder above her head, ready to do some damage. She hadn’t expected any sort of intrusion the first time and the shock had made her careless and ill-prepared. Luckily, it had worked out for the best (in that she hadn’t been murdered, anyway) _._ This time, she wasn’t taking any chances and she wouldn’t be caught by surprise.

When she saw who was standing there, however, there was no other word to explain the emotion she felt. It was the kind of emotion that caused her fingers to go limp, the meat pounder falling to the floor and her jaw dropping at the same pace. Her heart, which had been pounding furiously in her chest, adrenaline pumping, came to a sudden and abrupt halt.

Caught by surprise, indeed.

For there stood Ben, in all his Moncler glory, two grocery bags (reusable, of course) in one hand, that same body-bag duffel slung over his back, and a large pizza box in his other hand, the enticing smell of hot pizza wafting in her direction.

They stared at each other for a breathless moment.

“You…” She was the one who finally broke the silence. “You came...back?”

He put down the grocery bags carefully and slid his duffel off his shoulder and onto the floor. He approached her slowly, seeming unsure of himself, gripping the pizza box tightly. As he got closer to her, he set it down on the table.

She looked at it like it was a foreign object. A delicious foreign object. Her stomach grumbled.  _Traitor_. She ignored it.

“I—” He ran his hands through his hair. “I drove for a couple hours. Made it to—to some city. And then—I turned back around.” He shrugged helplessly, as if to say he was controlled by a power beyond his reach. “I couldn’t—as much as I wanted to...to get back to my real life...I couldn’t handle the thought of you up here by yourself. On Christmas.” He shook his head, the self-loathing evident on his face.

She shook her head back at him, her tongue darting out to lick her lips, which felt weirdly numb.

“You didn’t...you don’t owe me anything,” she mumbled, still shell-shocked by his presence. “I would have been alone up here anyway. And we’ve only really known each other two days, after all.” It felt important to say those words out loud, to remind them both of it. That whatever it was they were feeling, it was likely thanks to proximity and loneliness and a sense of displaced affection that they were unable to place upon anyone else.

Just those reasons. And nothing more.

“Yes,” he agreed, “that’s true.”

She looked up into his eyes, dark and solemn, and saw the same doubts, the same wonder and incredulity that she was certain were reflected in her own.

 _What a pair we make,_  she thought ruefully. 

He cleared his throat. “Still. It felt wrong to leave you, two days acquaintance or not, and I think maybe you agree.” He glanced up at her and she bit her lip and looked back at him, wondering if her emotions were written too plainly all over her face. “I’m back now. For good. Unless—”

He paused and she knew he needed some type of reassurance; an insistence that, yes, she wanted him here, yes she was glad he was back – but the words died on her lips. It still felt too raw, too new to acknowledge. 

As she contemplated what, exactly, she wanted her next words to be, her stomach grumbled again. Loudly.  _Ignore this, bitch. I still smell pizza._

“Pizza?” she asked quickly, hoping to cover the sound of her demanding belly. The offer also worked to avoid his hanging, unspoken question, while simultaneously answering it. “I’ll get the plates.”

“Uh,” he cleared his throat, looking momentarily stunned, before nodding. “Yeah. Yes. It's apology pizza.” He quirked her a half smile, devastating in both its appearance and its transience. “Let me just—”

He went back to the front door to hang up his coat, then picked up the grocery bags and brought them with him as he returned.

“I see there’s still power,” he noted, placing the bags on the counter.

“Yes, thankfully,” she said, placing the plates on the table, along with napkins. “Wine?” she asked, hands hovering near the glasses. It was borderline comical how quickly they fell back into their domestic habits and roles, she thought, only semi-ignoring the rush of pleasure that such domesticity brought.

He paused, eyeing her. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” she replied honestly.  _In so many ways_ , she realized.

Appearing satisfied with her answer, he briefly contemplated her offer. “Sure. A bit.”

She watched as he pulled items out of the grocery bags – two six-packs of water (the one-litre Evian bottles and not the cheap, half-litre PC brand she’d bought), fresh milk (in a carton), eggs, another loaf of bread, plus three packages of real pasta, a jar of organic sauce… 

One by one, he pulled out enough food to feed them for well over a week, if they were so inclined. Fresh fruits, more bananas, a few bags of salad mix – all organic, according to their labels. Yogurts, cereal, some tall glass bottle of something that looked like milk, but wasn’t—

“Kefir,” he offered, seeing her bemused expression.

“Ah. Yes.”  _What?_

He quickly pulled out the last of the groceries, which included two bottles of red wine, before tossing her the small cardboard box he pulled out at the very end. It rattled as she caught it and she looked down at the label.

_Tylenol Cold & Sinus._

She looked up him, the warmth that had eluded her for the majority of the day slowly coming back to fill in almost all of her cold and aching parts.

“Just in case,” he said, that crooked half-smile taking care of the rest. “Let’s eat.” He gestured to the table. “Pass me the wine and a corkscrew.”

She looked consideringly at the two bottles he’d brought and grabbed the fancier looking one.

After all, it  _was_  Christmas Eve.

He uncorked the wine while she helped herself to three slices of pizza. There was just pepperoni on one side and pepperoni, green peppers, and mushrooms on the other.

“I didn’t know what you liked,” he admitted, pouring her wine. “But it’s great pizza. We’ve always gotten it from this little shop down the road, been here for ages. My parents know the owner, a sweet old—well, an old lady, anyway, named Maz.” He topped up her glass and began pouring his own. “She calls the place Pizza Nova.” 

She choked slightly and debated whether or not she should tell him Pizza Nova had hundreds of franchises across the province and there was nothing “little” or “shop-like” about it, nor did she believe this ‘Maz’ was related to the Primucci family, but she abstained.

“This is perfect,” she assured him instead, hiding her smile behind her pizza slice. He sat down and grabbed his own slice and they ate in silence for a minute. She eyed him as he chewed and swallowed, the muscles in his jaw and throat working. Her mouth felt dry suddenly and she reached for her wine glass.

“Cheers,” she said almost as an afterthought, around a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese. She held her glass up to him.

He looked at it for a beat, his eyes soft and charmed, before he picked up his own glass.

 “Cheers,” he said softly. “Merry Christmas Eve.”

“Merry Christmas Eve,” she echoed, smiling gently. They each took a sip and resumed eating quietly.

She knew they were currently existing in a fantasy world, where real-life problems didn’t exist or need to be addressed. She knew that eventually they would need to have a conversation about why, exactly, he left and, more importantly, what really made him come back. She knew that she was being foolish and doing herself a disservice by not demanding answers before sharing a meal and a bottle of wine with him.

But she was hungry. And the wine tasted good. And she’d only had very few things in her life that could be construed as blessings. And right then – this meal, this man?

It felt like a good thing; the right thing.

So she ate her pizza and drank her wine and they made minimal small talk about traffic and pizza toppings until it was all finished and it still felt good and it still felt right; even more so, with a full belly and a pleasant wine buzz.

She took the dishes to the sink and ran the water over top of them; he topped up their glasses and carried them to the living room, where she followed him. They both sat down on the couch, quiet again, sipping their wine and staring at the fire.

He was the first to speak. “Not bad,” he said, nodding towards the hearth in a half-hearted gloat. “Although, you don’t look like you would have had much burning time left.”

She shrugged. “I could have managed.” She could feel the edges of her fantasy world wilting; it was as though someone had pricked the corner with a pin, letting the air out of the illusion.

He glanced over at her. “Listen, Rey, I—” Huffing, he ran his hand through his hair, scratching awkwardly at the back.

 _It’s his tell_ , she finally realized, _the hair thing._ He only seemed to do it when he was nervous or uncomfortable.

“I thought,” he continued, “at the time, that I was doing the right thing by leaving.” He put the wine glass down and turned his body towards her. She protectively cradled her own wine glass closer. “You already know part of the issue – the Kylo Ren thing, the family thing, the third book.”

She nodded. The conversation they’d had yesterday _(was that only yesterday?_ _What is time?)_ echoing in her ears. His falling out with his parents. The feelings of inadequacy. The conclusion to his trilogy.

“The other part—” He braced his hands on his knees and exhaled heavily. “It’s more complicated. I—” He swallowed, jaw working in some form of visible consternation, then he turned, grabbing his wine glass and taking a swig that drained it. “I acted...poorly,” he continued, “during an event that my agent had set up to drum up more publicity for the books in anticipation of the third one coming out. Very poorly.”

She took a sip of her own wine and gave him what she hoped was an open and receptive look as she waited for him to continue.

“I’m not proud of my behaviour. Not the least of which because it was petty and small and—grossly unprofessional. But because...after you and I spoke, I realized that—” He stood up, too fidgety to stay seated or still for too long, and paced around the coffee table. “—I actually  _want_  to do it. To finish,” he clarified. “Maybe to—to restore some of my family’s good will? Or maybe to just, I don’t know, see these characters through to the end. Because they’ve been haunting me. Whether I like it or not, they’ve been haunting me for ten years.”

He stopped abruptly, facing her, arms at his sides. His eyes conveyed determination and sorrow in equal measure. It felt painful for her to stay put. To not get up and fold this giant, hurting man into her embrace. Even so, she remained seated. And waited.

“And I thought—” He began pacing again. “I thought I owed it to myself – and to you – to do that and to figure all this out – the story, myself – somewhere else. Not here. Not intruding on your space, not—not—” He waved his hand in vague disgust. “—waking you up every morning, attached to you like a—” He snorted in self-derision and shook his head. “Anyway. I thought I was doing the right thing. And then, the further away I got from here, the stupider I felt about it. If it was  _right_ , why did it feel so—?” He shook his head again, scratching at the back of his neck in a now-familiar gesture. “I never should have left you here, Rey. Alone.”

Something about the implication rankled her hard-earned sense of independence and she started to interject, to tell him she was a big girl and she could manage just fine  _thank you very much_ , and probably leave out the part where she cried all day, but he held up his hand, staying her protests.

“I know you’re capable of being here alone. I’m just saying you shouldn’t have to be.” He continued to gaze at her, his eyes shifting over to an intensity that she had begun to know well. “Because you’re not alone, Rey.”

Her breath caught at those words, the meaning of it so much more substantial than the words themselves, and she felt her eyes well up involuntarily. He must have known the impact it would have on her – knowing parts of her history and her strife – but still, hearing them come from him so earnestly and sincerely… it felt heavy. Purposeful. And right.

“Neither are you,” she told him, knowing in her own way that it was the right thing to say. His reaction – a quick double blink and a hard swallow – confirmed that to be true. She reached out her hand. He glanced down at it quickly, nostrils flaring, then back up at her. She held it up to him, patiently. Waiting.

He rounded the coffee table and sat down beside her again, slowly. He reached out until their hands made contact, and she grasped his gently and squeezed. It felt warm under hers, large and secure. He turned their hands so his was palm up and squeezed back.

The logs in the fireplace popped and crackled then, loudly releasing a small shower of embers onto the hearth. Rey and Ben both jumped slightly, looking towards the sound, and the spell was broken for a moment.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, remembering something. “Look what I found.”

She put her wine glass down and disentangled her legs from the couch, hurrying to the bedroom and returning just as quickly. In her hands was the record player, with whatever records she could grab stacked on top.

“Oh, wow,” he said, voice low, as he looked at it incredulously. “My grandfather’s old record player. I remember that thing. My mom used to pull it out and play it once in awhile.” He shook his head, as if to clear the fog of old memories. “I haven’t seen it in ages.”

“Well, it’s lovely, but I can’t get it to work.” She placed it on the table. “I didn’t want to fiddle with it too much, but—” She trailed off and shrugged helplessly.

He leaned forward, peering at it. “Let me see if I remember…” He picked up the Sinatra record that was still resting on the turntable, examined it, and then placed it back on. He adjusted the RPM setting and fiddled with a couple of the knobs on the opposite side. Reaching underneath the needle, he clicked something and it sprang free from whatever it was attached to.

Rey watched, her mouth forming a little O-shape as each new click and turn of a knob brought them closer to actually hearing music.

Then, Ben lifted up the needle and carefully placed it on the edge of the record. A staticky crackle emerged and then the unmistakable sound of jingling bells began, preceding – of course – the song “Jingle Bells”.

“Oh my gosh!” Rey clapped her hands excitedly. “It works!” She bounced to the beat of the music, singing along softly, before catching him looking at her, a small smile on his face as she made an utter fool of herself. She laughed self-consciously.

“Ah, sorry,” she said, feeling her face heat up as she tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I love Christmas music.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he told her, that tiny, semi-bemused smile remaining intact. “It’s very...sweet.”

She shrugged, still a bit self-conscious. “It’s ironic is what it is. The girl who never had Christmas, loving the anthems of the holiday she couldn’t stand to be reminded of.”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “I get it, though. It’s about hope, right? It’s about the idea of families coming together and having fun in the—snow, or whatever, and about—about chestnuts roasting on an open fire and kissing under the mistletoe and all the things we love, in theory. The things that are supposed to evoke nostalgia, even if—”

“—Even if you have nothing to be nostalgic about,” she finished for him. He nodded, watching her carefully as she continued. “Even if you’re the proverbial orphan, standing out in the cold, looking through the window at the family carving the Christmas turkey, all sitting ‘round the dinner table.” She side-eyed him. “We all know which end of the window you were at,” she added dryly.

He gave her a chagrined look, but eventually shrugged in acquiescence. 

“I used to do this thing,” he admitted, “where I—I liked to rewrite history. Like, if five years ago, someone had said that to me, I would have laughed and been like, ‘yeah, okay, sure’ and implied that my mother hadn’t been around or my father had been outside having a smoke while my uncle cut the turkey, or something. And it wouldn’t have been entirely a lie. There were years like that. Times like that.” He shrugged. “But there were good times, too. I can’t—I don’t want to forget that. Not anymore.”

She regarded him, feeling a softness in her heart for this conflicted man. “You should call your mum,” she told him gently, half-expecting a rebuke.

Instead, he surprised her by nodding. “I should.”

The song changed again, a dulcet choir humming ‘Silent Night’, as a prelude to Sinatra’s smooth, mellifluous voice slowly crooning:

_I’ll be home for Christmas  
You can plan on me_

“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes closing of their own volition as she felt the prick of wistful tears behind her eyelids. “I love this song.” She opened them again, knowing that they glowed with unshed tears, and she gave him a tremulous smile and eye roll as if to say,  _How silly am I._

Ben looked at her, his gaze warming into something indecipherable as it ran over her eyes, her cheeks, settling on her lips, before trailing back up to meet hers. He stood up carefully and her eyes followed him, resting on his towering form above her. He looked as though he were deliberating on something for just a moment, before he spoke.

“Dance with me?”

He  _literally_  could not have shocked her more. “I...you...what?”

He grinned then, a half-smirk that deepened the cleft in his cheek and revealed some of his charmingly imperfect teeth. “Come on.” He held out his hand. “Dance with me.”

_Christmas Eve will find me  
Where the love light gleams_

Her hand settled into his warm palm before she even realized what was happening. He drew her up towards him and pulled her close, moving them in the direction of the picture window. The sun had almost set, bathing the room in an orange glow. The snow sparkled outside, on the ground and on the trees, like a white blanket strewn with diamonds. It glinted in her eyes as she stared out for a minute. It was a beautiful sight: the glimmering snow, the setting sun, the peace and the serenity of nature as a quiet day came to a close.

She looked up at Ben, who was staring at her, his eyes soft and dark, the irises a deep tawny-amber hue that shone only for her.

A beautiful sight, indeed.

_I’ll be home for Christmas  
If only in my dreams_

She moved close to him and they began to sway gently, back and forth, her hand still settled in his much larger one, the other hand resting on his bicep. She could feel the warm cashmere underneath her palm and she couldn’t resist the urge to stroke it up and down. His hand at her lower back applied light pressure that brought her even closer. Her nose was at his collarbone and she surreptitiously inhaled his lovely, masculine scent – some sort of expensive cologne mingled with fresh-scented soap and the warm, clean smell that was his alone. She tilted her head and rested it on his shoulder, closing her eyes. He rested his chin on her head. They continued to move softly to the rhythm of the slow melody.

 _Christmas Eve will find me_  
_Where the love light gleams_  
_I’ll be home for Christmas_  
_If only in my dreams..._

The song trailed off, the crackling of the record more apparent as the music faded.

Rey lifted her head, feeling as though she were coming out of a trance. She looked up to find Ben already looking down at her, his soft, gentle gaze now filled with a smoldering yearning, his eyes dark and ardent.

She opened her mouth to speak and he leaned down, capturing her lips with his own. The kiss was not gentle or particularly romantic. There was something almost uncivilized about it, about him – like a tiger that had been caged for too long. It felt like he sought to devour her, to brand her, with this kiss. His tongue stroked hers almost possessively, as he brought one hand into her hair and the other around her back. She matched his fervour with her own, her blood pumping the same word into the staccato pounding of her heart:

 _Finally. Finally. Finally_.

She clawed at him, grasping at his shoulders, trying to wrap her legs around him, to get even closer – hell, she would have crawled inside him if she could have. He bent his knees slightly and lifted her up, cradling her ass in his massive hands. He carried her over to the couch as if she weighed nothing and deposited her there, before chasing her down with his own body.

They resumed kissing, the sense of urgency ignited by the closeness of their bodies and their positions, Rey’s moans and Ben’s growls, and his hands smoothing up her legs and over her sweater. He palmed her breasts and she could feel her oversensitized nipples rubbing against the soft inner material of her sweater. She arched against his hands, her hips meeting his, feeling the press of his arousal against hers.

Abruptly, he pulled away and stood up, letting out a harsh exhale, almost like a curse.

“ _Shit_ ,” came the actual curse, seconds later.

Disoriented, it took her a second to come back to reality.

“What’s wrong?” she breathed eventually, boosting herself up on her elbows, legs still dangling off the arm of the couch.

“I didn’t mean—Rey.” He raked his hands through his hair agitatedly. “I didn’t come back just for—for this.” Avoiding her eyes, he clarified: “I didn’t come back to take advantage of a situation.”

 _Oh,_  she thought, feeling amusement and affectionate in equal measure, _you idiot._   _If only you knew_.

She sat all the way up, swinging her legs around and standing up from the couch. She walked towards him slowly, until they stood facing each other, barely a foot apart.

For the first time in her life, she felt truly powerful. She was no longer the awkward, parent-less girl, stuck in the foster system. She wasn’t the studious teenager working two jobs, trying to maintain a high enough GPA to keep her scholarship. She wasn’t the girl who stood back while others enjoyed friendships and families and all the things that made them feel safe and warm and protected.

This man had burst into her solitude and disrupted her life for two full days that had felt like a lifetime. He had tested her and infuriated her and cooked for her and taken care of her. He’d changed her clothes when she was in the throes of a fever. He’d warmed her when she was cold. She’d confided in him and he had listened, truly listened, and she had done the same for him. 

Most importantly – he’d come back.

She’d never had somebody who came back.

She arched her neck to look up at him, loving how tall he was; how present. Somehow, in the course of forty-eight hours, she realized,  _he’d_  become her safe place; her way of feeling secure and warm and protected.

She waited until his eyes caught hers and then moved down lower, coursing over her face, settling on her lips.

She made sure those eyes were on her mouth when she spoke.

“So, don’t,” she told him, an echo of his earlier statement, “take advantage.”

He blinked and caught her gaze once more, the russet depths conflicted yet filled with longing.

She reached a hand up and curled it around his neck, fingers tangling into his dark hair, wavy and overlong. Perfect.

She pulled him towards her in a slow, intentional motion, drawing him closer and closer still, until their lips were almost touching, the sense of confidence, of desirability he imbued in her coming even further to the fore. That was when she spoke again:

“Let me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW! Get ready for the good stuff. Till then: links!
> 
> Tell me more about this "[Pizza Nova](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Nova)" you speak of. 
> 
> I picture Anakin's record player as looking kind of like [this one](https://fennicknyc.com/products/music/vintage-1950-s-record-player.html). 
> 
> Are records [different sizes](https://www.quora.com/Do-all-record-players-use-the-same-size-vinyl-If-they-dont-how-do-you-know-what-size-to-use) and how do you know what's what? 
> 
> How would it [even work](https://stereochoice.com/operate-vintage-record-player-correctly/)? 
> 
> I absolutely refuse to answer "Who's Frank Sinatra?" and will instead direct you to [the Sinatra record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Jolly_Christmas_from_Frank_Sinatra) that Rey is drawn to. 
> 
> And, lastly, [click here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLQdvCNCfAY) if you would like to hear the exact song that Rey and Ben danced to (and maybe re-read the scene with the music playing, for ~the feels~). 
> 
> (The Sinatra bit is for my husband. I love you. Thanks for reading.)


	7. the other side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previous** : Ben and Rey woke up in a compromising position, Ben decided that he needed to distance himself from the situation and focus on getting his life back on track. The power came on and that pushed him even more towards leaving. He left, Rey cried, he came back (with pizza!) and they picked up where they left off.
> 
> **This chapter** : some unresolved tension gets resolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, hi. *puffs out a breath* So, uh, I'm back. Seriously, sorry for the delay. I won't keep you here long. I need to thank my lovely betas: [slipgoingunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder) for her irreplaceable advice and wisdom and her unwavering faith in me even when I said I was 3k words into this chapter and they still had all their clothes on, and to [strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie) for an impeccable read-through and her invaluable suggestions. Go read their works, as they are both truly incredible forces in this fandom.
> 
> One more chapter and we're done! Thank you as always to those of you who’ve stuck around. Er, Happy Easter. Hope you enjoy the pay-off to all your patience and don't forget to let me know what you thought, if you feel so inclined.

* * *

Once, when Ben had been younger, he’d broken something.

(—Oh, he’d broken many things, in a reckless and attention-seeking and mostly unattended childhood and adolescence; but this time, this thing in particular—)

It had been a hair comb. Long-pronged, delicate, bronze and ancient, the wiring twined into the shape of petals filled with a mother of pearl inlay, real diamonds and pearls scattered throughout. She’d always left it on her dresser – an ornament, rather than an object with a practical purpose. He’d been lying on her bed watching the TV in her room as she’d applied her makeup, going out again for a literary function or a psychology function or some other sort of adults-only function that seemed to be a constant yet ever-changing part of her existence.

The existence that hardly ever seemed to include him.

When she’d left, with an absent kiss on his head and the lingering scent of her perfume in the air, off to meet his father – busy himself, hardly home – at whatever event she’d had that night, he’d lain on the bed staring at the ceiling for a time, TV forgotten.

Abruptly, he’d gotten up and moved to the dresser. He’d looked at himself in the ornate mirror attached to the dressing table taking inventory of the awkward features that made up his face, more awkward now at the onset of puberty, and then quickly glanced away. He’d lightly touched all the items resting on the surface – a soft-bristled silver brush, facing up. A round, mirrored tray that held three of her favourite perfumes. A polished wooden box for her jewellery. A glass organizer with painted gold trim for her makeup. And the hair comb.

Picking it up, he’d examined it, turning it over in his hands, the fragile and delicate thing feeling awkward in his ungainly and fumbling grasp. He’d brought it closer to his face to get a look at the detail of one of the petals, digging his finger underneath, when the thing had snapped off. Half the wiring – much, much more delicate than he’d originally thought – popping right off, smacking into the mirror, the mother-of-pearl clunking out onto the dresser, diamonds scattering.

He’d stood there in stunned silence for a full minute, only his eyes moving as they frantically tracked the path of each disparate piece that had gone flying off.

Who would have guess that this ornate thing – ancient as it was – would have been so delicate?

Certainly not Ben, who, deeply chagrined and more than moderately horrified, set it back down gingerly.

He’d carefully picked up all the pieces he could find and placed them in a neat pile on the dresser. Then, he’d stared at them another moment or two, before abruptly turning tail and leaving.

When his mother had come home that night, he’d known she had seen the damage immediately – how could she have missed it – but she hadn’t come bursting in his room to scream at him, despite how he’d been waiting with bated breath for her imminent scolding.

The next morning at breakfast, as he’d shoveled Corn Flakes down, he’d stared at her warily – leaning against the counter in her nightgown, robe on, sipping coffee and staring at a spot on the ceramic tile floor. She hadn’t said a word to him – not in reprimand, but not a “good morning” either, or a “how was your night?”

He’d rinsed out his bowl and turned to her, opened his mouth to say something, but the words simply didn’t come out. Instead, he’d left the kitchen.

Later, when he’d passed by his parents’ room, he’d poked his head in to look at the dressing table, to see if the destroyed comb had still been there or not.

The dressing table had been entirely cleared of any hair piece debris – the diamonds, the wiring, the pearls. All gone.

“It had been my mother’s.”

The voice behind him startled him and he’d jumped reflexively, whirling around. His own mother stood there, staring inside the room, her gaze following his to the dressing table. She’d looked up at him, finally, her eyes meeting his for the first time that day, a tight smile on her lips. It felt like a sucker punch. 

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it,” she’d said, a small hand resting gently on his arm. Then, she’d moved past him into the room and headed towards her closet, presumably to get ready for the day.  

The feeling had stayed with Ben for a long time afterwards; in fact, it still lingered at times, especially if he thought about it for more than a minute or two. A dull ache, like pressing on an old bruise. It was a feeling that had been entirely unique in both its pervasiveness and its intensity.

The shame and the guilt. The knowledge that something irreparable had occurred. The unshakeable awareness that a decision had been made – and it had been the wrong one. Ben was used to disappointing people (when he wasn’t providing fodder for their latest best seller, of course). Getting into trouble at school for talking back to teachers. Not “maximizing his full potential” with his work. Being too sullen, too contrary, too  _tall_.

But somehow, this incident felt like the worst of them all. As though the disappointment came from a place inside Leia where she truly believed Ben was incapable of changing. That this was just – how he was. Inconsiderate, clumsy.

A letdown.  

Back in the present day, it had taken Ben until Belleville to come to a realization: he was tired of letting people down.

The small borough outside the Toronto area had marked the almost-three hour point of his drive. He had been slowly unpacking the complicated emotions surrounding why he’d left and what it all meant, his mind swirling as he reflected, turning the events of the last three days leading up to Christmas Eve over and over again in his head, those last few hours in particular replaying in his mind on a loop.

The look on Rey’s face had echoed the look his mother had given him all those years ago.

The thought paralyzed him, hitting him with the unbearable weight of his latest poor decision. Before he’d even fully realized what he was doing, he had exited off the highway and pulled into the closest gas station, turning around and getting back on again; this time heading in the opposite direction.

It had taken more than a few hours total, not including a quick pit stop for groceries and pizza, but his head and his heart had felt progressively lighter each mile that had taken him closer to the cabin.

In the course of a few days, that cabin had gone from a mindless escape to something more. No longer just a staid memory; the wooden remnants of his nostalgia and an adolescence he’d hardly remembered. Instead, he’d been electrified. Provoked, for once, in a way that didn’t feel combative or hostile. Challenged in a way that had become restorative.

It’d had a calming effect, this feeling of being seen. Understood. And no longer alone.

The long-lost feeling of guilt, of wrongness, of prevailing disappointment that had pervaded his psyche as a young boy and had again reared its ugly head the further and further he’d driven away from the cabin – away from Rey – had faded almost completely by the time he’d parked his car in the freshly shoveled snow of the driveway, some five-odd hours after he’d originally pulled out. The smell of hot, fresh pizza filled the interior of his car, steaming the windows. His palms felt a bit clammy as he tightened his hands on the steering wheel and drew in a deep breath.

There was a chance, he acknowledged finally, that he’d misread the situation. That she had, in fact, been happy to see him go – get out of her life and her solitude. That, perhaps she’d been a bit offended at what may have been considered a rebuff, but she’d gotten over it in due time and now his return would be an unwelcome surprise; an awkward postscript to a story that had already ended.

Yes, there was that chance.

But he was here now. And the pizza would be getting cold soon. And either way, he’d brought her enough groceries to last for another week or more, so maybe he could act as though there had been a purpose to his return. A purpose other than the pervasive gnawing of his remorseful conscience. A purpose other than the fact that he’d wanted ( _needed_ ) to come back – not just for her, but for himself, too.

Letting out the breath he’d drawn in, he cut the ignition and mentally prepared himself to step back out into the snow. Back towards the cabin.

Back towards Rey.

And he tried not to think about what he would do if she asked him to leave once more.

* * *

“Let me.”

An hour or so after Ben’s reappearance, Rey’s final words felt like they echoed in the small, quiet room, where the only other sound was the crackling of the fire and the unsteady shuddering of their mingled breaths as she pressed herself against him.

She needed him to understand what his return meant to her; to know that  _she_  was making a conscious decision to push their relationship forward. It was why she pulled him towards her, deliberate in her desire and her intent, making sure to send that message along with her words.

He had crossed the threshold to whatever it was between them, obliterating the line they’d been so carefully toeing at for days.

Now it was her turn to meet him there.

Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed her lips to his again, placing soft and open-mouthed kisses, revelling in the plush warmth. She coaxed his top lip open and pulled on his bottom one, her tongue barely skimming him.

He let out a sound that resembled something between a growl and a groan, his arms tightening around her like a vice, drawing her even closer. She pulled back slightly to look up at him, feeling her lips tingling at the sudden lack of contact.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, with a short laugh, a thought suddenly occurring to her. “I know I was just sick—I mean, I feel much better now, but I guess I need to provide a disclaimer for my potential germs.” She bit her lip and look up at him with a self-conscious grimace, one eye closed in chagrin.

He was silent, except for his harsh breaths as he stared at her, nostrils flaring. The silence extended for a beat too long, to the point where she began to get nervous. Then, almost crowding her, he leaned forward and dragged his hands down her body, grasping her bottom firmly and pulling her closer to him. He ducked low, hair skimming her jaw, her torso, before she felt his shoulder gently plant itself in her stomach.

“Ben, what—?”

Her equilibrium faltered as his hands tightened, jolting her upwards slightly as he stood simultaneously. She teetered over his shoulder before her torso went almost entirely against his back, rump in the air beside his head.

“Ben!” she cried out, laughing as she half-heartedly thumped her fists against him.

This playful side of him, this lightness, made her own heart lift higher. She craved the levity of this moment, made so much sweeter in the way it cut the tension that had been growing – ebbing and returning – for the few days they had spent together.

 _Three days_ , she reminded herself dazedly, including the day he’d arrived.  _Three days and now—_

He carried her securely to the bedroom and she felt a decisiveness under his lighthearted demeanour – in the way her secured her bottom with a heavy hand, the way he hoisted her up more firmly over his broad shoulder – as though he’d, once and for all, made a decision that he was now seeing through in its entirety. She shivered slightly at the implications – and the anticipation –  just before he deposited her onto the bed.

He looked at her for a beat, his eyes dark and shadowed in the dimming evening light coming in through the small window. She felt her skin prickle as he stared at her and she resisted the urge to wriggle self-consciously or say something self-deprecating to break the tension.

She was happy she’d held her tongue when it appeared that her silence had bolstered him into action. He stepped towards her and planted a knee on the bed at her feet, before slowly sinking down on top of her, until the weight of the upper half of his body rested on the lower two-thirds of hers. He placed his head lightly on her chest, rubbed his cheek softly against the warm cotton that separated them. He let out a deep sigh and she felt his body settle more firmly into hers, his hands coming up and resting in the divots of her waist in a hold that was a shade or two softer than a grip.

She could almost feel his weariness bleeding into the mattress as she lay there trying to relax her body, to sink further back and not appear as tense as she felt, while her mind raced.  

 _What does he want me to do? What is_ he  _doing? Aren’t we—? Doesn’t he—?_

He shifted slightly, rubbing his cheek against her once more, his hair tumbling over onto her bare upper chest, tickling her collarbone. He let out another sigh, softer this time, and she felt the hot air skim over her breast, causing her nipple to peak through the fabric. Hesitantly, she brought her hands up and used the tips of her fingers to draw the hair back further from his temples.

She felt rather than heard the satisfied rumble in his chest and it emboldened her to go further, dig her hands in deeper, pull the hair back in sleek waves as she drew it away from his face in a soothing, repetitive gesture.

“That feels good,” he mumbled, his hands tightening at her waist. The weariness had transformed into an odd lightness now; she felt relief – not only her own, but his as well. It felt like they had reached the end of a long journey and were now basking in the comfort of a familiar place. 

If it was bizarre that they had transformed from the frenzied picture of lustful impatience to this sedate, dreamy reprieve, lounging lazily on the bed rather than tearing it apart, Rey hardly noticed. It felt so comfortable, so right, lying here with him – stroking her fingers softly through his hair, feeling his measured breaths rising and falling, the steady beating of his heart on her thigh. They weren’t in any rush, not anymore. A boundary had been overcome, a barrier broken.

They were on the other side now. And they had time.

“This is nice,” she said quietly, barely aware of the fact that she’d spoken her thoughts out loud until she heard them echo in the silent room.

“Mmm,” he hummed an agreement. Then: “I’m sorry I left, Rey.”

A litany of excuses ran through her head, the most glaring being the one that she had been repeating ad nauseam up until that point:  _You don’t owe me anything, we hardly know each other_. But it no longer rang true enough to her mind or her ears; the logic and practicality which had always pervaded her life was absent here.

 _Yes_ , she agreed, on the edge of surprising herself.  _You shouldn’t have left._

Still, a reprimand felt just as out of place as logic did. So, instead, she gently murmured, “It’s okay.”

He shifted, then, resting his chin on her solar plexus as he looked up at her, a lock of hair escaping from her fingers and falling over his brow.

“We don’t have to—” He cleared his throat, appearing slightly discomfited. “I mean, I don’t want you to think I expect—”

She quirked a wry smile at him. “Are we back there again, then?”

He folded his lips together and huffed out through his nose, amusement and chagrin dancing in his eyes in equal measure.

She felt her own expression soften as she looked down at him, warmth and affection blooming in her chest.

“Ben.” The name slipped through her lips, achingly soft, an admonishment and a question and a plea.

He looked back up at her, his eyes caught in a quick half blink as he heard her say his name, his face softening, too, into something tender and heated all at once. Bracing his arms on the bed, he leaned upwards and forwards until his face was above hers, his eyes skimming over hers, back and forth, and then over her nose, her lips, her cheeks.

Abruptly, he lifted off of her and stood beside the bed.

“Wha—?” She sat up as well, elbows braced beneath her, watching him as her mind edged towards wary.

“It’s too dark in here,” he said by way of explanation, even as he was already halfway out the room. She looked around and noted that he was right – the darkness from the waning evening sun had deepened even further, casting the room in shadows. The main source of light came from the hallway, where the kitchen light had remained on, but the room was angled far enough away that it was hardly sufficient.

Ben came back with three candles and the lighter and made quick work of setting them up – one at the windowsill, two on the bedside table.

“Wow.” Rey let a low whistle. “You’re killing me with the romance here, Solo.”

“Purely for practical reasons,” he responded, though she caught the twitching smirk he tried to hide.

Once the candles were lit, he rejoined her on the bed. She quickly scooted to the centre and he chased her there, bracing his arms on either side of her as she looked up at him.

“There,” he said softly, his eyes running over her face once more. “Now I can see you.”

She felt her face melt into a smile as her heart thumped irregularly in her chest. There was something so damn precious about the crooked grin he gave her, unabashed and warm and wholly unselfconscious. One of the few times she’d seen him with his guard completely down.

She was grateful for his last minute decision to light those candles. Now she could see him, too.

Rey had never really appreciated the holiday season. She’d never experienced the eager anticipation of Christmas morning like most children her age had, or the feeling that something magical was occuring in the night sky while she slept. She’d never felt the promise of happiness; of seeing wishes fulfilled through mystical sources upon waking the next day. Had never really grasped the idea that it was a holiday of miracles or the expectation that miraculous things could, and would, happen.

Except—

Except now, there was an emotion blooming inside of her, sanguine and light, that made the promise of tomorrow seem auspicious rather than something to be dreaded. It was the first Christmas morning she could ever remember looking forward to. The first Christmas she felt she  _understood_.

And the first that she hoped would never end.

She pulled him down towards her and he captured her lips with his own, his mouth urgent yet soft. She met his tongue with hers, reveling in the feel and the taste of him. Opening her legs, she felt him sink down further into her body, pressing against her length with his own, enveloping her in the welcoming sensation of the heavy pressure of his body – his sheer mass enough to smother her with barely any effort, though he kindly managed to keep a portion of his weight off of her so that they could continue what they were doing, unimpeded.

They kissed slowly, lazily, tongues stroking. She pulled at his hair and he caressed her cheeks, her calves finding their way to the backs of his thighs, her feet resting behind his knees. He pulled his mouth from hers and she let out a noise – a protest, the start of a whimper – and he chuckled softly with a half groan, before tucking wet kisses under her jaw. His lips touched her pulse and his tongue came to wet her there, too, and she gripped his hair tightly, pressing him closer.

He took the hint and kissed her again, grazing the spot with his teeth, sucking gently and nipping slightly, before using his tongue to soothe the results of his ministrations. She moaned and tightened her legs around his, drawing him closer still.

Pulling him from her neck, she kissed him with renewed vigour, licking into his mouth, drawing his tongue to hers, raking her fingers through his hair and holding him to her.

He groaned and rested more heavily on her so he could plant his hands on either side of her neck, stroking her cheeks, her jaw with his thumbs. 

She rolled her hips against his, electricity zinging through her body at the contact between her softness and his hardness, and turned her head away from the kiss. He broke away dazedly, hands still planted at her jaw, thumbs playing softly at her earlobes.

“Off,” she rasped, tugging at his top. “Take this thing off.”

He sat up on his knees and raised his arm over his head, tugging the sweater off by the collar and tossing it to the floor. The plain, white t-shirt he wore underneath came off in much the same way right after.

He went to lean back down again and she stayed him with her hands on his chest, choosing to take a minute to just stare.

All hard grooves and sharp edges, he somehow seemed broader and larger with clothes off than on. Formidable, but vulnerable, too, in his hunched shoulders and diverted stare – the tension in his jaw belying a level of discomfort that most men of his...structure didn’t tend to have.

“You’re amazing,” she said, meaning it.

His eyes flicked to hers and he pursed his lips in a half smile.

“Okay,” was his response. Then, evidently deciding she’d had her fill, he leaned down and kissed her again. And again.

“I’ve been waiting,” he told her between kisses, “to do this forever.”

“We’ve only—” She turned her head to speak and he rained kisses along her jaw and neck, working his way lower. “—known each other a few days,” she reminded him.

“I wanted to kiss you the minute I set foot in this cabin and you came at me with your smart mouth,” he responded, letting out a frustrated groan as the collar of her sweater impeded his journey downwards.

“Liar,” she breathed, as his hands snaked under her top and over her bare skin. “You hated me.”

“Never,” he murmured, moving further down to kiss the part of her belly that he’d exposed.

“You—” Her breath caught as the sweater moved further up, past her bralette, bunching under her armpits, and his kisses moved higher. “—you tried to throw me out into the snow.” She ran her fingers through his hair, tugging the dark locks lightly as he rained kisses along her rib cage.

“That can’t be true,” came his rumbling voice, nose rubbing against the lace material of her bra. He tugged at the sweater again. “Hands up,” he commanded.

She suppressed a pleasant shiver at his tone. As the commanding officer of her own life – and the lives of her students, for the most part – there was something freeing about giving up authority once in awhile. She lifted her arms and he pulled her sweater up and over her head, leaving her in her lacy see-through bralette that had probably seen better days.

Watching him, she saw his eyes darken as he took in the expanse of bare skin he’d revealed. It didn’t appear that he’d noticed or cared about the state of her bra or about anything for that matter, except— _oh_.

He was tracing his finger along the edge of the lace that creeped over the modest swell of her breast.

He looked up at her for the briefest of moments, almost as though he were trying to gauge her reaction, and then his finger dipped below the lace, hooking into it and pulling it down. The thin material tucked underneath and miraculously stayed put, her breast exposed to the cool air of the room. The space heater was still on, but old cabins were old cabins and without a sweater, she was feeling the drafty sensation of early winter weather in a roughshod interior.

She shivered involuntarily, from the temperature or from his ministrations she wasn’t sure, and gooseflesh rose up on her skin. He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the side of her breast, just short of the nipple, and did the same on the interior. She bit her lip, hard, and shifted restlessly.

He circled the nipple slowly with his finger, round and around the areola, not touching the point directly. She worried her lip, looking at him, her breath coming through her nose in sharp pants.

“Ben—” she gasped out, just as he leaned forward and replaced his finger with his tongue, circling and then sucking the entire nipple into his mouth. Her sharp inhale turned into a moan as he used his tongue and his teeth to bring the already distended bud to an aching point. He brought his hand up to her other breast and pulled the lacy material down on that side as well, before moving his mouth over and applying the same attention there.

She writhed beneath him restlessly, enjoying what he was doing while simultaneously wanting more. She ran her hands over his bare back, feeling the muscles ripple and bunch under her palms. She was so intent on admiring the smooth feel of him beneath her hands, she almost didn’t notice as his kisses started to go lower. He scattered soft caresses with his lips down the line of her belly, around her navel, and at the waistband of her leggings. Pausing, he tucked his fingers underneath and drew them down slightly.

“Wait,” she breathed, common sense infiltrating suddenly and inconveniently, “Do you have a—?”

He swore sharply under his breath and then sighed heavily, resting his forehead on her hip bone.

“No.” His voice rumbled on her thigh.

 _No, no,_ no. They’d come this far, only to stop here? It was ludicrous and laughable, the stranglehold that misfortune had on her fate. She wanted to look up at the ceiling and scream, when an idea occurred to her. An irresponsible, foolish idea.

She ran her fingers through his hair, gave it a slight tug so he’d look up at her.

“Ben,” she began hesitantly, trying to navigate her way around a possibly uncomfortable conversation, “It’s...been awhile. I’ve been to the doctor’s since the last—”  _Don’t talk about the last time you had sex, oh my GOD_ “—Uh, gotten all my routine—er…” She looked down at him and gave him something of a grimace that she hoped looked somewhat encouraging. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she ended, hoping that her non-information somehow conveyed all the information she needed it to.

He blinked. Twice. “You mean…?”

She nodded, biting her lip. “You?”

“I—” He shook his head and laughed. Actually laughed. “Uh, yeah, no, I’m—basically in the same boat. I’m clean.” He looked back up at her. “But what about—?” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Are you—on the pill, or…?”

 _Right, that._ “IUD,” she confirmed. “Five years. Good to—er, go.”  _Shut up, shut_ up _._ She needed to salvage the situation and fast or else they’d never get anywhere.

“Ben.” She shifted her fingers so that they ran through his hair, tracing around one perfectly goofy ear, and down his stubbled jaw. “I’m clean, you’re clean. No risk of pregnancy. Now that we’re through with all this verbal foreplay—” She lifted her hips, bumping his chin playfully. “—what are you waiting for?”

In a flash, his expression went from uncertain to heated. He quirked a smile at her and kissed her again through her thin leggings, in the spot where her thigh met her pelvis. Then, he curled his fingers into the waistband of her pants once more, tugging them down past her knees before taking them off fully, her ankle socks going with them.  

It seemed like he was indeed done with waiting.

* * *

As Ben tossed the leggings behind him onto the floor, he took in the sight of Rey on the bed and felt his breath leave his lungs in one swift exhale. Her bare breasts, pert and round, strawberry nipples begging to be plucked, hiked up further by the bra that he’d tucked underneath them. Taut stomach trembling, gooseflesh rising on her skin, the fine hairs on her thighs illuminated in the candlelight. She was wearing a thong, lace along the top, serviceable cotton below. A darker colour than the bra, so he could see where they’d gone a bit damp. The sight made his arms weaken and his cock harden even further – a feat he didn’t realize was possible. Her legs were opened loosely around him, her right foot idly stroking the back of his left leg.

“I want—” He reached between her legs and put a finger on the cotton of her underwear, stroking the spot that was just a bit wetter than the rest. She hissed out a breath that ended on a moan. “—this,” he groaned, moving his finger up and down. “All of this.”

“Take off your pants,” she whimpered, the foot she’d planted on him dragging more insistently, as though she could do it herself using that foot and the force of her will alone.

“In a minute,” he replied, knowing that the second his jeans came off he had about three-point-five seconds before endgame. “I’m taking these off first.” He hooked his fingers in the band of her underwear at the same time that she lifted her hips and off they came, to meet with the leggings on the floor. She was bared completely now, aside from the flimsy bra still tucked under her breasts, trussing her up for him. He pressed his palm hard against the bulge in his pants, willing himself to settle just enough to get through this with his dignity intact.

Moving further down on the bed, he positioned himself directly between her legs. Rather than self-consciously squirm or try and hide, she allowed her thighs to part further, draping themselves across his arms. He looked up at her and only saw anticipation and eager, earnest desire.

Her honesty, the way she wore her feelings so clearly on her face, flattened him. He knew, right then and there, prostrate at her open thighs, that he would be eternally at her mercy.

He brought his hands to her centre once more, separating her gently, running his finger up and down on her bare skin, slick and heated. He brought some of her wetness up to her clitoris and stroked there purposefully, once, twice. Her thighs twitched and she moaned. He could feel her toes curling on his lower back, where she’d settled her feet. Bringing his finger down again, he circled the wet opening to her body and watched, mesmerized, as it contracted for him. 

“Ben,” she breathed, a half-sob and a quiet cry. “Please—”

“Can I put my mouth here?” he asked, rubbing again in the area that had grown wetter still, his finger slipping up and down, from clit to hole, his movements growing erratic as her hips jerked involuntarily.

“ _Please_ ,” she sobbed in earnest this time, throwing her head back, her voice echoing in the small room. “Anything, something—”

She cut off with a broken gasp as he leaned forward and met her body with his mouth, the scent and the taste of her flooding his awareness until it had zeroed down entirely to the point of contact. It was all her. It was only her. Made for him and him alone. He wanted to devour her whole. He felt frenzied, as though there were no possible way he would be able to get enough of this, of her, ever in his life.

He willed himself to calm down and direct his attention in a constructive way, using all the tools in his (moderately stocked) repertoire to focus on maximizing her pleasure rather than lingering for his own selfish purposes.

Reaching down, he adjusted himself, the waistband of his jeans digging in to his stiff member – a visceral reminder:  _Down boy_. Then, bringing his other hand up, he stroked her clitoris with his thumb in quick, even caresses, as his tongue worked the entrance of her body, gliding in, out, and around.

She let out a prolonged, whimpering moan, her toes digging hard into the waistband of his jeans as her feet grasped for purchase. Her hips tried to lift off the bed, but he kept her firmly planted with the one hand splayed across her belly and the other moving up to hold her at her hips.

“Oh my  _god_ —!” Her hands found his head, nails scraping on his scalp. The slight pain grounded him as he persisted, switching positions so his tongue found her clit and his fingers her cunt.

He pressed in his index finger up to the first knuckle. She was so tight he thought he would combust, even as he felt her body accept and draw him in further.

 _Go slow_ , some level-headed part of him, buried deep beyond the more primitive mental state he was currently inhabiting, warned him.

Making self-restraint even more difficult, he had Rey above him moaning and humming her approval, her head tossing back and forth as her nails dug in deeper. He pushed his finger in further, then experimentally slid it back out, and in again, turning it upwards to curl into her. She ground down on his tongue, his one finger growing slicker as her body accepted and revelled in him.

Sliding out, he put his two fingers as close together as they could go and nudged her entrance once more. He was met with some resistance, even as Rey moaned her approval, so he pulled out and pumped shallowly until he could slide in with ease. He moved back, replacing his mouth with the heel of his hand, his two fingers working in and out of her body slowly.

Bracing himself on his elbow, he watched her. Her mouth parted, lips soft, teeth occasionally coming down to bite into their plushness. Her face was flushed in the light of the candles he’d lit, eyes closed tightly, long lashes caressing her cheeks. Tendrils of hair clung damply to her forehead and temples. A red flush had bloomed on her chest as well, edging down to the tops of her breasts, her nipples distended and beckoning him.

“Rey,” he whispered, staying his hand.

Her eyes fluttered open, as though coming out of a trance, and she looked down at him dazedly. Her hips twitched, indicating her body hadn’t yet caught up to her mind.

“You’re going to come for me now, alright?” He gently pressed the heel of his hand into her clit, his fingers surging in just a bit deeper.

“Ahh—” Her eyes closed again tightly, her chin falling on her chest as her hips rose to meet his hand. She nodded frantically. “Yes—yes…yes, Ben, please, yes—”

Reaching up, he tweaked her nipple with his other hand, bracing himself on his knees to continue pumping his fingers in and out with renewed vigour, purposeful in his intent.

She gasped and moaned, sobbed and cried out, and suddenly, her voice cut off and her entire body tensed up as taut as a bow string, as though suspended in time and space, in the vacuum of that cabin in the woods where they were alone and nothing else existed except the echo of her cry in the room and the heated, saturated clench of her body around his fingers as she shattered.

* * *

Coming down from her orgasm was like trying to kick to the surface from the depths of a churning sea. Her arms and legs felt leaden, lungs burning with the exertion of her gasping inhales, her heart pounding an erratic beat. She felt almost certain that she had died, for just a moment. 

Never, in her  _life_ , had she experienced anything like that. Her body was still trembling from the aftershocks. She cracked an eye open to see Ben still between her legs, hands braced on the bed, watching her (potentially looking for signs of life).

“Pants,” she slurred. “Off.”

He huffed out a laugh, mumbling something about refractory periods, before standing at the edge of the bed, undoing his jeans, and sliding them off. He stood, black boxer briefs on display, as well as a positively  _massive_  erection protruding from them.

“Jesus bloody Christ,” she gasped at the sight of it. “Where d’you think that thing’s going?” She could hear her accent slipping, but couldn’t bring herself to care, sprawled as she was on the bed, barely even attempting to close her legs back up.  _Essex_ , she thought grimly.

He palmed himself through the black fabric and gave her a charmingly crooked smile, hair mussed – from her hands, most likely – and hanging haphazardly over his brow.

“I’m sure we can find somewhere,” he responded pragmatically, before jumping on the bed, onto her.

She squealed and he cut her off with a kiss, her laughter turning into a moan on his tongue. He stoked the fires slowly, unhurriedly, gentle caresses with his mouth and lips. She lifted her hips against his impatiently, suddenly annoyed with the cotton barrier between them.

“Off,” she mumbled against his lips. “Off now.”

“Demanding,” he chided, still not pulling away from her.

Planting her hands on his chest, trying not to get distracted by its broadness and hardness and—

Giving him a shove, she rolled him to the middle of the bed and then straddled him as he lay back, feeling the hot press of him between her legs through the thin fabric of his underwear. His head rested against the pillows, one hand tucked beneath it. The sight of his bicep alone—

She frantically tugged her bralette off, getting stuck only briefly, before chucking it to the floor. Shimmying down his body, she focused on kissing each pectoral muscle, then worked her way down his abdomen. When she reached the waistband of his boxer briefs, she hesitated, looking up at him to gauge his reaction.

What she saw was him looking right back down at her, eyes laser focused on what she was doing. When their gazes met, his became positively molten. Maintaining eye contact, she slowly pulled his shorts down and he lifted his long legs – all large, hard sinew – to help her get it off completely.

Once they were both nude, she paused again, struck.

There was something about it, this, all of it that left her feeling winded; a manic, pleasurable high, of being in the perfect place at the perfect time in the perfect situation. For all she liked to bemoan her bad luck, this certainly felt like a case of fate smiling upon her, for once – depositing this man into her lap in a cosmically laughable way and, three days later, allowing her to wind up in this moment.

“Everything okay?” he asked quietly, after what must have been a few too many seconds of silence, his hand coming down to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

“Yes,” she answered honestly. “Perfect.” Leaning forward, she punctuated her proclamation by taking his cock in her mouth.

He clearly hadn’t been expecting it, because he let out a strangled cry, his hand banging the ancient headboard in what seemed to be a reflexive gesture.

“Jesus—” he muttered, his other hand resting on her head – not tugging, exactly, but with trembling fingers tangled in her disheveled hair just a bit too tightly. 

Spurred on by his enthusiasm, she rolled her tongue around the head and experimented with how deep she could take him, her hand squeezing the base. Her lips could barely reach her fingers.

 _Well, that’s just obscene,_  she thought, impressed and aghast all at once.

“Come here, come here.” He was reaching for her before she could test her limits further and she looked up at him, acquiescing as he dragged her up his body until she straddled him again, feeling his rigid cock settle between her labia. She rose up on her knees and reached behind her, grabbing him, feeling the permeating heat and hardness, finding the liquid yield of her body and sinking down just enough to take him partially in and—

Oh.  _Fuck_.

Clearly, it was going to be an adjustment. She braced her hands on Ben’s chest and he stroked her forearms.

“Are you...okay?” He looked worried and chagrined, but also slightly chuffed, which she gracefully ignored.

“Yes,” she huffed. “Let me just—” She lifted and sunk down again, this time making it a bit lower.

He bit his lip and looked down between their bodies and then closed his eyes, letting out a low, strangled curse.

“Come on, come on,” she chanted quietly, mostly to herself, rising and falling in smooth, shallow motions, her thighs burning.

His hands found her sides and they were so large they covered the expanse from her hips to her waist, with his fingertips digging into her bottom. He secured them on her and helped the movement, up and down, alleviating some of the pressure on her beleaguered hamstrings.

She began panting from something other than exertion as his cock hit exactly the right spot inside of her and she sunk lower and lower still until she was seated on him fully, the backs of her thighs touching the tops of his. She let out a gasp and then a sigh and he drew in a sharp breath through his nose simultaneously. They stayed like that for a moment, still.

Her fingers impulsively spasmed on his chest and he covered her hands with his own, looking up at her, eyes shining in the candlelight with a soft, reverent gaze that inadvertently caused tears to spring up into her own eyes. She held eye contact for a moment and something passed between them; a revelation. An understanding.

Slowly she began to move her hips back and forth, ignoring the twinge of pain it incited. Instead, she chased the feeling that was growing somewhere deep inside of her; a heavier, richer depth of pleasure than she’d ever experienced before. Her movements began to get slipperier, more erratic as she felt herself slowly breaking apart piece by piece.

Suddenly, his hands stayed her hips, halting her motion entirely. She shook her head as though to clear it, and she looked down at him, on the edge of confused.

“I—”

Without speaking, he deftly flipped her onto her back and entered her once more, resuming the rhythm she’d begun. She happily transferred control, bringing her hands up to course over his shoulders and around his neck, settling into his hair. This way felt better anyway – physically, as her hips rose up to meet his, and emotionally, too, as his body covered and protected her and she felt safe and secure cocooned in the shell of his arms.

“I love this,” she moaned, barely conscious of what she was saying even as her lips moved closer to his ear. “You feel amazing, Ben. You’re amazing. This—this—”  _This is everything_.  

He groaned loudly. “If you only knew—” His own movements got deeper, jerkier. “If you only knew, Rey.” The mattress creaked each time his knees and feet dug in with every thrust. She could sense his body shuddering above her, his arms starting to shake. “F-f-fuck, I think I’m going to—”

“ _Yes_ ,” she breathed. “Me, too.” And she could feel it, approaching the edge of the final precipice, the sensation of toeing the edge of a steep cliff. The point of no return. “Fuck— _Ben_!” she cried out, teetering, before finally tumbling over the edge.

White light burst behind her tightly closed eyelids as her orgasm erupted throughout her entire body, from her toes to the ends of her hair. She felt like firecrackers had gone off inside of her and she was powerless to control the trembling, gasping moans and cries as she sobbed out his name over and over again.

Seconds later he followed her, one hand clenching her buttocks, his feet digging so hard into the mattress that he would have shot them in the headboard, if not for his other hand coming out at the last second to slam against the battered wood, saving them both from a concussion. He buried his head beside hers and let out a guttural cry, his whole body turning into an impenetrable stone wall as he came.

An eternity later, he collapsed on top of her as she continued to pant and gasp and try and get her bearings, head spinning from her orgasm and her thoughts. Ben was placing soft kisses on her hair, ears, and neck, whispering words she could barely discern but which made her feel warm and tingly and satisfied.

Settling upon her was an overall feeling of rightness, of completion, that she had never felt before. Not just with sex, but in general – in a life where she had drifted through her existence, bouncing from place to place, never truly belonging anywhere.

Except now – here, with this man, in this moment – a slow, dawning realization unfurled. As though something had slotted into position. As though she were finally in a place that had always eluded her.

As though she were home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not many notes this time (unless you want me to go full-on with the anatomy links), but you can learn a bit about [Belleville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belleville,_Ontario), if you like!

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://delia-pavorum.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/delia_pavorum)


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